How Does Economy of Monopolies Work in Science?

In business there is only one kind of a monopoly: high valued, rich enterprise that controls a sector of a market. Well, this kind has subkinds: natural monopoly (a business holding some network that can function well only when entirely controlled by one entity, e.g., utilities, railways), legal monopolies (arising from a legal barrier for other businesses to enter, such as a patent), collusion monopolies, etc. But the common thing for all of them is that never business monopolies are poor. (Well, almost never: A patent owner may still be poor.)

In science monopolies also exist, but they are often different than common business monopolies:

Every scientist or a science collective is a monopolist, because a discovery can have only one author or one collective of authors (unless the discovery is challenged by more than one author discovering it at nearly same time). This simply attaches the author’s name to a published work.

But yet another kind of monopoly in science arises out of selfishness and tradition: Because of selfishness of others, usually only the author can publish his discoveries, even if he/she gave the right to publish (such as through a Creative Commons license). Selfishness: People usually don’t want on publishing others’ works for free. Tradition: Publishers accept only submissions from the author.

This makes the author a monopolist, often a monopolist without money. This may be a monopoly of an important discovery, blocking development of much of science (especially if the author has no money to publish on him/her own).

This project provides marketing money for the authors. But this is a temporary solution: We need to create the occupation of science marketers, and they receive the money for marketing.

So, science ethics, namely the custom of accepting submissions only from the author, is immoral, because it effectively blocks development of science.

To overcome the silly system of monopolies, donate to AIIS (AI Internet-Socialism) app.