@brembs @adredish @PeterKraker
I came to the conclusion that it is pointless to show academic decision-makers the mountains of literature explaining why collaborating with the oligarchs of scientific commercial publishing is bad business. They are not making market choices, but playing as actors in David Graeber's '#bullshitjobs' feudal system.
I wrote it in Italian (https://zenodo.org/records/18164570)
but Graeber's passage from https://archive.org/details/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs-a-theory-1 can be seen here:
Maximizing profits means paying the least number of workers the least amount of money possible; in a very competitive market, those who hire unnecessary workers are not likely to survive. Of course, this is why doctrinaire libertarians, or, for that matter, orthodox Marxists, will always insist that our economy can't really be riddled with bullshit jobs; that all this must be some sort of illusion. But by a feudal logic, where economic and political considerations overlap, the same behavior makes perfect sense. As with the PPI distributors, the whole point is to grab a pot of loot, either by stealing it from one's enemies or extracting it from commoners by means of fees, tolls, rents, and levies, and then redistributing it. In the process, one creates an entourage of followers that is both the visible measure of one's pomp and magnificence, and at the same time, a means of distributing political favor: for instance, by buying off potential malcontents, rewarding faithful allies (goons), or creating an elaborate hierarchy of honors and titles for lower-ranking nobles to squabble over,
If the academy is all about spending other people's money and competing for prestige, then our colleagues' behavior makes perfect sense. It is the existence of dissenters within the system that would need to be explained. :-)
