Upvoted for an important topic. But I think you miss a fundamental element of the equilibria under discussion. It’s not _only_ a question of coordination. It’s also a very hard to solve alignment drift. Many participants see the current situation as necessary to their well-being, and will actively fight to preserve it.
That’s not a coordination problem, except in the greater sense that people with different timeframes or goals for each other need to be convinced that their approach to life is wrong.
Many participants see the current situation as necessary to their well-being,
I’d be curious for an example of this. Obviously e.g. Elsevier doesn’t want universities to solve their coordination problem, but they’re not actually involved in any of the contracts which would be required to solve that one.
Other problems may be less tractable, but within the class of “Nash equilibria that aren’t even the best Nash equilibrium” I don’t imagine you’d get much resistance to change?
An example would be that those who’ve previously had success in this publishing model, and now have some influence over future papers (because they’re faculty and advisors, based partly on their prior publishing). They correctly believe their status will decline if a different measure of success takes root. Likewise those who get some of their worth by being referees for the limited “accredited” journals—they would be justified in worrying that their status would decline with a more open process.
Note that the optimal position for these conflicted participants is to publicly decry the system while privately supporting it, often by pointing out that there’s no coordination mechanism. This leads to the appearance that coordination is the only barrier, because the real problem (conflicting desires) is not publicly acknowledged.
This situation repeats in MANY examples that at first look like just a coordination failure—there’s a lot of overlap with stakeholders who benefit from (or perceive they do) the situation, and those who choose to continue it rather than defecting.
Upvoted for an important topic. But I think you miss a fundamental element of the equilibria under discussion. It’s not _only_ a question of coordination. It’s also a very hard to solve alignment drift. Many participants see the current situation as necessary to their well-being, and will actively fight to preserve it.
That’s not a coordination problem, except in the greater sense that people with different timeframes or goals for each other need to be convinced that their approach to life is wrong.
I’d be curious for an example of this. Obviously e.g. Elsevier doesn’t want universities to solve their coordination problem, but they’re not actually involved in any of the contracts which would be required to solve that one.
Other problems may be less tractable, but within the class of “Nash equilibria that aren’t even the best Nash equilibrium” I don’t imagine you’d get much resistance to change?
An example would be that those who’ve previously had success in this publishing model, and now have some influence over future papers (because they’re faculty and advisors, based partly on their prior publishing). They correctly believe their status will decline if a different measure of success takes root. Likewise those who get some of their worth by being referees for the limited “accredited” journals—they would be justified in worrying that their status would decline with a more open process.
Note that the optimal position for these conflicted participants is to publicly decry the system while privately supporting it, often by pointing out that there’s no coordination mechanism. This leads to the appearance that coordination is the only barrier, because the real problem (conflicting desires) is not publicly acknowledged.
This situation repeats in MANY examples that at first look like just a coordination failure—there’s a lot of overlap with stakeholders who benefit from (or perceive they do) the situation, and those who choose to continue it rather than defecting.