Imagine a society where intellectual merit and scientific contributions are of the highest honor. The vast majority of population is committed to conduct scientific research, and is motivated by the outcome of improving the living quality for all.
The only celebrities would be highly regarded scientists, instead of dumb people who are good looking. Everyone should be paid similarly on a macroscopic scale, because inequality will often lead to conflict of interest.
However, citations should not be a measure of success, because citations vary drastically across fields, and people with lower citations should not get discouraged, because if there is much competition, there is guaranteed to be people cheating to get more citations, which happens in our world right now, and it should not be happening in an utopia.
There will be no wars, therefore there will be no federal budgeting for national defense, all that money could go to education and research. With all that money, education system could really use a transformation. There will be smaller classes taught by teachers who are actually enthusiastic about teaching. For parents who prefer to educate their kids themselves, they should be paid by the government accordingly as well.
For kids who are not into science, they have the freedom to pursue art, or sports or other disciplines. They should have the freedom to pursue their passion without worrying about future job salary. Because only this way we will best utilize talent.
Scientific journals will not charge people for getting access to papers!! This is so counter-intuitive, as science is probably the most collaborative thing out there. Even more, science news should be made into newspapers as replacement for our current one filled with politics, business, gossipy stuff. The same with TV and other media.
I was inspired to write this piece because I am not a big fan of how our society runs. So called “celebrities”, earn so much money when they just put on makeup and flip their hair to a camera, where scientists work so much longer hours, tackling problems that have much bigger impact on the advancement of technology, are rewarded so little. Even the highest honor in science, the Nobel Prize, comes with a finite amount of money. But celebrities can just say dumb things and look pretty and will be rewarded with the same amount or even more than that if they are big shots. This arrangement is not the best for this society, and I know my proposal is a bit extreme towards the other end of the spectrum. But if the society could evolve into an intermediate state, I believe the acceleration of advancing science will then increase exponentially.
The Logical Offering 