You are describing modern technology in general. The amount of nickel or other REE (rare earth element) used in smartphones, laptops, cars, trains, airplanes, wind turbines, infrastructure grid, etc. needed to sustain modern capitalism far outweigh the amount of REE used to build once in 25 years one-off machine with zero commercial value (but of high cultural and scientific value).
I take your point that academia is a bourgeois institution where a few people in cushy tenured position benefit from bulk of labor done by postdocs, adjuncts, and grad students who are severely underpaid relative to their skillset and contribution. But something like the LHC and other large scale experimental science (think of NOAA and NASA satellites) will not be maintained by academic professors in ivory towers who benefit from broken academia system, it’ll mostly maintained by highly capable technical staffs (PRAs - professional research assistant) who are required to make project ‘werks’ and compensated fairly relative to their technical skill.
Governmental research institutions like NASA, NOAA in the US, ANSTO and CSIRO in Australia, the national labs in Livermore, Los Alamos, and their equivalent EU institutions like CERN ran by professional research staffs on “normal” government worker salaries and contracts are way more equal, less stratified, and less exploitative to the academic workers than the “ivory tower” academic university system.
ran by professional research staffs on “normal” government worker salaries and contracts are way more equal, less stratified, and less exploitative to the academic workers than the “ivory tower” academic university system
the only good PMC is a…well, you know!
nasa trivia
- the shuttle was designed to dod rather than civilian requirements because funding was contingent on launching space assets for the us military
- nasa flew ten classified shuttle missions for the dod, including one where they waived safety rules and launched north to put a keyhole spy satellite in an unusually inclined orbit. the same contractor that (probably) made the mirror for that satellite also made the hubble backup mirror
- radar satellites for topographical and oceanographical research were funded in part with the promise of collaboration with the us military to improve ballistic missile targeting
- eight apollo service modules flew classified cameras on loan from dod
- nasa collaborated with dod to maintain a cover story that the u2 was a nasa test aircraft when actually it was being used to obtain military intelligence on the soviet union
You are describing modern technology in general
Yes, based on our resource consumption we need to radically restructure our entire society to be more ecological. Not sure what your point is; i would like extraction for all those other purposes reduced and minimized also because what we’re doing rn isn’t sustainable. Marx was fairly clear on this
it’ll mostly maintained by highly capable technical staffs
I addressed this in my original reply; “Also of course the unequal exchange between the global south and north to create the superprofits funding the blue collar job-haver’s salary and benefits.” I don’t think it’s inherently good that more technical jobs are opened up in the imperial core
Governmental research institutions
Friend you seem to have entirely missed the meaning of ‘academia is bourgeois’. I said: “Its goal is constant growth of its industry, with little to no regard for the consequences (which are always displaced as far away from the scientist as possible). All of this is justified with an unproven faith that it will eventually be beneficial for the people whose land is dug up for the metals for the neat machines scientists play with.”. I did not mention anything about the stratification of academic jobs, and governmental research institutions clearly fall into academic science as I defined it.
