Optimal - Egalitarian Ownership Institution
1. Scientist - Specialist
The scientist is a very powerful specialist. The influence of a successful scientific researcher on the way we view the world and how we use our resources is so powerful that many a scientist shudders to think of what he has unleashed. The difficulty is how to take that influence and turn it into cash. To some degree, the problem of capturing the benefits of their productive labor is a problem that the scientist holds in common with the craftsman. The first four stages of the economic system led to property rights which protect the property of the economic specialist from the state. But the problem is compounded for the scientist because he produces a common good, knowledge. Everyone benefits from scientific discovery but it is difficult for the scientist to collect payment for his services. To some degree patents allow some researchers to reap the fruit of their research, but this only encourages applied research. Pure research is left largely unprotected. What's more patents by impeding the free use of knowledge, which is by its nature a common good, slow the application of new knowledge. Finally, patents provide occasional bonanzas for the few, but patents do little to support the many who must try and fail, if the few are going to try and succeed. Given the problems, it was in the interests of both the scientists and society to develop an institutional framework within which the new specialist, the scientist, could be supported.
2.The Modern University - Educational Institution
During the nineteenth century, reforms in German Universities provided a firm economic and institutional foundation for scientific research by changing the criterion for choosing professors. Research accomplishments rather than teaching abilities became the chief criteria. This reform transformed the university from a teaching guild to a research guild. The result was the encouragement of research in general and pure research in particular.
The building of the scientific research oriented educational institution differs from previous educational institutions in that a previously existing educational system was changed rather than a completely new one built. Nevertheless, the University is a good example of the guild- like educational institutions that we have discussed. Academics established a strategy of regulating entrance through education and testing, with particular emphasis on research success as a test. This common strategy among teacher-researchers helped them set up a partial monopoly excluding non-research oriented teachers.
This informal national and international monopoly of teacher-researchers as a whole is strengthened by the local monopoly each university has over the students. Of course students often have an initial choice of which university they will attend. But moving after a commitment has been made can be costly. Thus Universities have local monopolies typical of educational institutions.
Universities also thrive off another guild mechanism, the right to certify workers for specific professions and areas of research. Like other educational institutions, the research-oriented university reaps profits by standing at the nexus between buyers and sellers and requiring both to compete for its services.
3. Network Report Writer - Independent Competitive Specialist
Once again we leave the solid ground of history and launch into speculation. The information network discussed in the development of the economy will be as the name implies essential to the network report writer. The network will break down the localism of our present educational systems. Like the expansion of the goods market, the expansion of the educational market will lead to greater specialization. The various tasks now performed by the instructor will be broken down to units that can be performed by machines or narrow specialists. For example, the lecture could be put on video disks, video tapes, or whatever technology proved convenient. This would allow many specialists from researchers familiar with the material, to writers skilled with verbal communication, to artists talented with visual expression to participate in building the lecture.
Of course this is technologically possible now but the lecture still prevails. A possible reason for this is that the other activities of the instructor, particularly answering individual questions, cannot be carried on by video tape. In the traditional classroom the student can ask the teacher or his fellow students questions. The network provides a possible solution. The student might call a consultant through the network, paying for the advice with electronic funds transfer. (This was originally written before the days of the 900 number.) Because of the large market afforded through the network, consultants could specialize in answering questions about a set of lectures or if the market was large enough, even a single lecture. The consultants also might specialize in answering in depth questions that go beyond the material or they might specialize in just clearing up confusion. Students could get more help, more cheaply, through this system. This system would also have the advantage of being more personal because it can be tailored to the needs of the individual. Instead of the present state supported school system, the state could give each student an account out of which they could pay for the lectures, consulting, testing, and grading.
The key point here is that just as long distance trade broke up the guilds and provided the large markets necessary to support the fantastic specialization of the production line workers, and the huge capital expense of modern industry, long distance consulting can break up the present educational structure and provide the markets capable of supporting specialization and mechanization of education.
The use of consultants will not stop with education. The research oriented professors role will be further specialized by the success of a new class of consultants catering to research needs. There are many areas in which these consultants may become economically viable. Many no doubt will be experts in computers or sophisticated mathematical techniques. Others may be expert librarians skillful at finding material in various areas. Many may become experts in a particular area of the literature enabling them to answer questions and saving the researcher the task of reading the material. All of these tasks and more are part of the job of the modern researcher. This task will be broken down and doled out to specialists by the network.
But there is one part of the researchers role which is particularly relevant at this point, the integrative process, deciding what questions to study, how to attack those questions, and how to go about putting the elements together. This is the domain of the network report writer, the independent competitive specialist for the scientific sphere. This specialist is very similar in some respects to the businessman. The expansion of the goods market and greater specialization of the workers was coordinated by businessmen. The network report writer will have a similar function.
The report writer may be working for private industry or government but in either case the job will probably be similar. The report writer may find a question and convince someone with funding that it needs investigating or the question may come from the institution providing the funds, possibly related to some question of policy.
Our network report writer hires the consultants, organizes the product and presents it. This is not meant to suggest that all these tasks will be done by one man; the executive tasks of a firm are often done by many different executives. But this does suggest that there will be a powerful class of specialist preforming the integrative role of scientific research through the network.
As mentioned before, the network report writer will be the independent competitive specialist for the scientific sphere. Like other independent competitive specialists they will preside over a breakdown in localism and a great expansion of the scale on which the activity is carried out. At first no doubt most will have advance degrees from centers of higher education. But like the military specialist, independent thinker and teacher, and businessmen before them, vigorous competitors from outside the academic institutional structure will eventually predominate. They will be competitive specialists because they will carry on and mediate the competition of various proposals for expression in the form of institutional policy.
The report writer will present and defend various strategies trying to make these strategies part of the general strategy or policy of the institution. Eventually some of them will be so successful that they will be able to set up the individual ownership phase of science, the social utility function.
4. Social Utility Function - Individual Ownership Institution
The acceptance by the electorate of a social utility function as the legitimate objective of society will be made possible by, and greatly enhance the power of, the network report writer. The network report writer will provide the reasoning and evidence showing that a social utility function is the best way to evaluate the effect of a policy of the community. Once the principle is established, the reports produced by this specialist will be used to determine the functional form and parameters. For example, how much should various types of pollution be weighted or what are the likely benefits from more money being spent on research.
The other side of the coin is the benefits that the report writers will receive. One benefit is the increase in power. More decisions will be made by them giving them the satisfaction of exercising power. But the extra decisions not only mean more power but also more network report writers. Socialism and the social utility function will require more of their input to replace the entrepreneurial input of the businessman.
A second benefit is that under socialism the positive externalities of research will be internalized. The whole society benefits from the research will be internalized. The whole society benefits from the research and the whole society pays the cost. This better enables society to pay the researcher the value of his expected marginal product. In a capitalist society on the other hand, too few researchers will be hired because many of the benefits are not internalized in the firm. Thus the socialist society benefits network report writers because it demands more of them.
The term individual ownership institution as it is applied here can cause confusion. The selection of names for the various stages that agree with all the traditional uses of words such as ownership and also fit the stages is difficult. We usually do not think of Christ as owning Christianity, or a scientist owning his discovery. But the traditional meaning of owning is not the one we have been using in this paper. The kings's ownership of the state means that he has the right to make decisions and determine rules and policy concerning the state. The founders of the great religions have the right to determine, even posthumously through what is recorded of what they said, the religious doctrine of their religion. The owner of a firm protected by property rights has the right to determine the rules and policies of his firm within the legal limits. In all of these cases, the institution of individual ownership is the establishment of a common strategy by the group to let an individual set policy for the group.
In this case the acceptance of the social utility function as the legitimate measure of community well being means that if the network report writer can establish by the standards of evidence associated with the social utility function that a certain policy will increase the value of the social utility function, then that policy will be adopted. Just as the economic agent must present the buyer with a good of sufficient value to convince the buyer that it is worth the price, so the researcher must convince the agents of the socialist government that his proposal will increase the expected value of the social utility function. An ownership institution does not imply that there is no work in obtaining ownership, it merely establishes your right to control once you have obtained ownership and until you lose it.
5. Socialist Network Report Writer - Dependent Competitive Specialist
As always with dependent competitive specialists, there is a new institutional relationship, but the activity is basically the same as the independent competitive specialists. Socialist network report writers collect and organize information gained from the network to develop policies that maximize the social utility function rather than the profit function.
6. Educational Institution for Socialist Network Report Writers -Educational Institution for Dependent Competitive Specialists
With time work on the social utility function will become increasingly complex, increasing the need for education of network report writers. Furthermore as the arguments surrounding the social utility function will become more sophisticated and abstract, the oversight function of the general electorate may become more difficult. Thus there will be more concern that education of the increasingly more powerful report writers be regulated. Furthermore, the report writers themselves will become anxious to protect the social utility function particularly from the combination of a poorly tutored, but charismatic report writer and a largely untutored electorate. In other words, to limit competition, the dependent competitive specialists will form a common strategy of limiting entrance on the basis of education.
This limitation of competition may worry traditional economists but like the many previous limitations of competition, it will establish an important tradition upon which future steps will be built. The tradition is the tradition of allowing the researchers working on the social utility function more independence and further respecting their judgement. This has dangers as we will see, but it is also a necessary part of the final egalitarian ownership institution, optimalism.
7. Everyone a Layman - Despecialization
Assumption, given enough time and resources technology will be able to create artificial circuitry capable of insightful and creative thought. Why make the assumption? After all computers show very little insight as anyone who has left an important comma out of a program knows. Even the smallest human errors prevent the computer from running the program. If to err is human and to forgive is divine, computers are clearly not divine. But of course, computers have little to do with the question. The assumption is that circuitry, no doubt very different from traditional computer circuitry, can be created that is insightful and creative. The reason for assuming that it is possible is that nature using random variation and natural selection succeeded in producing the human brain within a finite time frame and with limited resources. If nature can do it with a series of successful accidents, then technology, with a working model, the human brain, available should be able to pull it off. Furthermore, the artificial brains will eventually be able to carry on research far better than their natural counterparts.
The success of artificial intelligence in research makes everyone a layman, thus despecializing the activity. The last powerful specialization ended, the human race will be left in a vast undifferentiated mass. Some may struggle to understand the research done by the artificial intelligence, thus acting as biological watchdogs over all that artificial activity. But real competition for favored specialist positions will be at an end.
8. Optimalism - Egalitarian Ownership Institution
Under optimalism, the artificial intelligence will find the optimum technology for maximizing the social utility function and the voters will accept it. Optimalism will be egalitarian because all voters have access to the information. There will be no researchers who have special information and thus extra power over the policy making. Optimalism is an ownership institution because the voters will not earn the right to determine policy through education. Finally, optimalism is an institution because it involves a common strategy of accepting the policy recommendations of the artificial intelligence.
Optimalism is also a step in the system developed in chapter two. The people cooperate by accepting the strategy of the artificial intelligence. A new form of information processing, the artificial intelligence, is developed. The intellectual decision-making systems achieve full powers over the genetic.
This completes the scientific system. Once again a brief review may help clarify the system. The empirical (1) scientist is the specialist. To provide support for research, the Germans developed the (2) modern university, a collection of research guilds, or educational institutions. The (3) network
report writer will use the resources available through the network to do research. The network report writer will be independent of the university and thus is an independent competitive specialist. The (4) social utility function will establish the individual right of the network report writer to determine policy within the rules of empirical evidence. The (5) socialist network report writers will be the dependent competitive specialists. The socialist network report writers will set up their own education system, (6) the educational institution for network report writers. Artificial intelligence takes over the scientists role making (7) everyone a layman. This is the despecialization of the scientist's role. The optimal solution is accepted from the artificial intelligence by the electorate. This is the final egalitarian institution, (8) optimalism.
With this we have completed the eight stage process that ends with an egalitarian institution for the state, religion, the economy, and science. From here we proceed to another part of the theory. First, the economy gains independence from the state and science gains independence from religion. Finally, the economy gains dominance over the state and science gains dominance over religion. This is achieved with a four step process somewhat similar to the eight stage process we have already seen.
Chapter 7 Theory of shifting dominance.
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