Academic Publishing, Talking Frogs, and Nailing Your Head to the Floor
The Answer Is Transaction Costs
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The Cost of Rent Seeking
The problem is we're trying to ration access to a valuable rent, that is a tenured professorship. The big money makers in this process are the journals and publishers. They'll continue to try to protect their enormous rents, even though there is no social value being produced. In fact, the net result when you look at all the rent seeking is probably to waste resources. This problem of loyalty is something that was famously made fun of by Monty Python in their story of Dinsdale Piranha of Kipling Road.
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