Working for monopoly capitalism

[Tim Lund]

George Monbiot recently tweeted a link to an article he wrote last August, kicking off with this question:

Who are the most ruthless capitalists in the Western world? Whose monopolistic practices makes WalMart look like a corner shop and Rupert Murdoch look like a socialist? You won’t guess the answer in a month of Sundays. While there are plenty of candidates, my vote goes not to the banks, the oil companies or the health insurers, but – wait for it – to academic publishers

http://www.monbiot.com/2011/08/29/the-l ... -learning/

He doesn't go into the details of how they get away with this, but something of it can be learned from the forthcoming book jointly authored by LSE academic, Cllr John Paschoud - Access and Identity Management for Libraries / Controlling access to online information

In case anyone is interested, here's what an agent of monopoly capitalism looks like when off duty

[maturin]

You might like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZWAcxnOfKQ

As much as I dislike Monbiot's 'work', he is correct in this instance. Academic publishing is an enormous rip-off. I used to work for Reed Elsevier in the 90's. The corporate owner's idea of an acceptable profit margin for their sub-businesses was 60%. Anything else was looked on with great mistrust, or sold off.

The future for Academic publishing is open journals and crowd review. It has problems but is more transparent peer/crony review.

[maturin]

Full video of debate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTlCRw5nLe8

GM explains his position re Academic Publishing from 16mins in.

[stuart]

Robert Maxwell/Pergamon Press more or less invented this scam^H^H^H^H profit making opportunity. Now there's a scoundrel for his successors to live up/down to.

Stuart

[Tim Lund]

You might like this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZWAcxnOfKQ

Fascinating. I wasn't really aware of Baroness O'Neill, although I vaguely remember reading a rather waffly piece by her recently. Her anxiety that ordinary members of the public might not be competent to understand raw information is quite understandable; inevitably we make mistakes, and if we do, we just have to learn from our errors. Philosophers such as she struggle to accept that freedoms are indivisible human rights.

We have an example of this process here on the Forum in the last few days. Syd picked up the contents of Lewisham's statement of accounts, and, in my view at least, misinterpreted what is a perfectly proper role for local councillors. It was open to Councillors to contest what he wrote - or ordinary citizens such as myself, which I did. But would the world have been a better place if this part of Lewisham's accounts had not been published? I don't think so. Not least, it led me to pick up Lewisham's Chief officer for Regeneration being paid via a service company

[maturin]

Baroness Oneill is the epitome of the Patrician (attitude not class) view of the world: There are the rulers and the ruled. On no account must the ruled be allowed to touch anything. They might break it.