Capitalism Is Ruining Science
jacobinmag.com
jacobinmag.com
Seeming "capitalism" was said to be coined by Karl Marx, this much is obvious.
> "Without public investment, universities are compelled to play by private sector rules, i.e., to operate like businesses."
Ok, so is the issue that "science" now has to play the same rules as everyone else? (there was some sort of saying of "ivory tower academics" - I guess the ivory tower isn't as strong anymore?)
I agree wholeheartedly that science and academia should get public funding, more public funding the better, 110%. My wife's entire family is a family of scientists and I wanted to be a scientist too, when I was younger.
Not sure where that public spending money should really come from.. not "Take from the poor, give to the academics."
Should the title rather be:
"Academia is now threatened by economics like everything else" ?
It feels as if capitalism was some sort of "natural" economic organization.
The mere existence of various forms of capitalism is by itself a rebuttal.
In many countries, the civil society is fighting back against the very notion that every sector of human activity should be turned into an economic matter.
Moreover, the opposition between public and private sectors is outdated. The "commons" is a much more fertile way of building a future.
Decentralization of power and means of production through cooperatives opens a whole new path to get out of the public/private fruitless debate.
All educated people should either work solo or join/create a cooperative. Capitalism will slowly recede without the executives and intermediate management, and experts of all kinds.
No revolution of the masses is needed to fight capitalism back. But the "commons" need the creative class to take responsibility and lead the society in this gradual change.
Or you can stay within the US extreme capitalism to fight alone against billionaires, chasing the American Dream that only 1% reach (and many of them just inherit) - and in reality paying your mortgage and your education back so that you're debt free when 75. ;-)
I live and work in a cooperative. It is not rosy. "Decentralization of power" means nothing gets done, everything is late, no one takes responsibility of things until one person is bullied enough to do it.
There is no "Capitalism" that you're fighting against. You are fighting against 2 things: normal human interactions, and people who exploit those interactions.
I think you should focus on fighting against people who exploit those interactions, focus your efforts.
The tax would be fair since you’d figure out the rate of return of that basic science and add up all that compounding return.
Universities as we think of them are on a spectrum between a research university and one that teaches undergrads.
A research university that must act like a for-profit business can turn into the outsourced R&D department of a company, at best. Or at worst you get the hot mess of food/health/pharmaceutical research whose problems are best exemplified by looking at the history researchers on the payroll of tobacco companies.
If the undergrad/grad teaching universities need to act like a for profit business, they start converging towards a strange combination of teaching "fundamental skills" as well as "job relevant skills", as I or anyone who knows people currently in one can attest to. A poor cross between a company's outsourced job training program, minus actual hands on experience, and what universities claimed to be about, minus the rigor.
Or, more cynically, the university transforms into a place to go get a piece of paper that you need to get a well paying job which has the vaneer of teaching you deep concepts as well as skills useful on the job.
Brain storming some ideas:
I think a large portion of the problem is expecting university to be needed to get a job. It's largely not true, but it's perceived to be true, and so students fill up ranks in droves, and further to that, unis (under the current model) are incentivised to make lower barriers of entries and to graduate more students.
I think largely, the solution would be to stop the "uni is needed for jobs" thing. have training centers, have in job apprenticeship programs, etc, or atleast keep uni minimally involved.
I think if uni was to stop being seen as a "job centre" and was relied upon for more governmental policy things, or allowed to interact with business while also keeping as the seperate special class / meritocratic, then it'd be forever-protected (theoretically if it was working well).
Unfortunately university is one of Australia's prime exports, so things aren't changing here any time soon (here).
It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.
> I think largely, the solution would be to stop the "uni is needed for jobs" thing. have training centers, have in job apprenticeship programs, etc, or atleast keep uni minimally involved.
I agree that this would be the result of a solution. But the question is, how do we get society as a whole to believe that?
I cynically, and honestly, believe that people aren’t going to stop believing that it’s necessary to get an undergrad degree (and pretty soon a masters) until three universities have burned through their reputation and prestige.
Capitalist countries, such as the US and western Europe, have had an outsized contribution to scientific endeavor, winning more than their share of Nobel prizes.
This is probably because investment in scientific research depends on a level of material prosperity that wasn't achieved in the USSR and communist China. Centrally planned economies tend to be so corrupt that researchers may have bigger issues to navigate than "publish or perish."
Jacobin takes a reasonable point (marketization can have a corrupting influence), dials up the stakes hyperbolically ("a new dark age!"), and pins it on its favorite bogeyman – "capitalism" – an amorphous, nefarious scourge (it's not clear what level of socialism we need to adopt to avert the new dark ages.)
Seems like a more reasonable take would just be to increase public funding to scientific research.
Trust The Plan.
Jesus, Take The Wheel.
They all have a pretty similar ring.