Research results are cultural artifacts, not public goods

Many view scientific research as a public good. I consider this naive and indefensible. Scientific progress hinges on people and culture, not on research results as public goods. What do they mean by a public good? A public good is non-excludable: Once a scientific discovery is made anyone can access it at low cost. If true, why bother innovating? Just wait and adopt others’ discoveries. History tells us that it does not work. The British Empire’s technological edge took decades for others to match, despite eventual diffusion—at great cost. Consider the most significant advance of the last 20 years: large language models (LLMs). Papers, code, and breakthroughs are freely available online. Yet firms like OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI pay millions in salaries to top talent. Why? Can’t others just study the papers and replicate? Most organizations and countries can’t capture this “new knowledge.” Europe lacks an OpenAI equivalent for a reason. Knowledge is not a fluid, infinitely replicable like Jesus’s loaves. Scientific progress as cultural evolution. Adopting discoveries requires cultural updates—and it is far from easy. Einstein’s papers are public, yet reading them won’t make you Einstein. He wasn’t a public good; he thrived in a specific culture. It’s unclear if he’d fit in today’s universities. We defend government funded research, often claiming markets can’t price public goods. But markets price large language models effectively now. Innovators capture only a fraction of the value, but resources do flow to productive entities regardless of credit. In fact, I believe that the current relative scientific stagnation stems from government intervention. Pre-1970s laissez-faire policies served scientific progress better. But even if you disagree, please do not spread the naive view that knowledge and scientific progress are public goods. It is not. It is very much a private good as it is a cultural artefact. It is all about people, specific people, and how they think. Cultural artefacts can and will spread, obviously, but there is nothing free about it. And will definitively not spread equally everywhere.

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