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by vkou 83 days ago
That ossifies intellectual monocultures, though. (Or, heaven forbid, if someone has a financial conflict of interest in the private sphere...)
2 comments

The current solution doesn’t resist capture by capital either,

and indeed we’re already left with all of the things claimed - the worst of both worlds, really.

But this is already how the purse holders operate. A big group of experts get together and vote on which grant proposals within a given category to fund.

I think it comes down to how the system is structured and how many players there are. The more difficult it is for a small cult to capture control of the funding (or access to instrumentation or awarding of degrees or whatever) for a given area the less likely you are to end up with a monoculture.

Assuming the majority of the funding continues to come from governments then you have a centralized point of leverage that can shape the system. So it should be possible to impose constraints that result in a system that actively prevents monocultures from developing.