> Can you imagine any other industry where the people doing most of the work aren't compensated financially and conglomerates make most of the profit.
One that comes to mind, not coincidentally, is also in the academic world: College sports.
Perhaps both are due to the same cause, the misalignment of academic and market values: Academia is not profit-oriented; money is not their priority[1]. When they generate something of financial value (journal articles or football games), someone naturally jumps in (journal publishers, TV networks, NCAA), charges market prices for it, gives the academics producing it (faculty or student-athletes) the wages of academia (fame, status and pride), and keeps the cash for themselves.
[1] Next time someone tells you the free market is the one and only god that solves all problems and anything else is 'socialist', consider the many things that aren't market-oriented: Almost everything ever produced by academia, from relativity to the double helix to the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire; the Internet, World Wide Web, email, LAMP, etc.; the U.S. Constitution, the work of Gandhi and MLK; everything every soldier has accomplished ...
One that comes to mind, not coincidentally, is also in the academic world: College sports.
Perhaps both are due to the same cause, the misalignment of academic and market values: Academia is not profit-oriented; money is not their priority[1]. When they generate something of financial value (journal articles or football games), someone naturally jumps in (journal publishers, TV networks, NCAA), charges market prices for it, gives the academics producing it (faculty or student-athletes) the wages of academia (fame, status and pride), and keeps the cash for themselves.
[1] Next time someone tells you the free market is the one and only god that solves all problems and anything else is 'socialist', consider the many things that aren't market-oriented: Almost everything ever produced by academia, from relativity to the double helix to the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire; the Internet, World Wide Web, email, LAMP, etc.; the U.S. Constitution, the work of Gandhi and MLK; everything every soldier has accomplished ...