Two things.

The person walks away after this $600 poorer. We've found ways to do things of arguably far less social value then say, a new medical discovery, such as stand up comedy or say a club dj without them having to fork over $600 to do what they're being advertised for.

In fact, they actually get paid.

Second, the enterprise for expanding human knowledge shouldn't come with a door fee, full stop. If we want to progress the sciences we should find out how to collectively pay for it without charging amounts to all involved that they cannot afford.

If we want, say, 1,000 Einsteins as Jeff Bezos believe we should be aiming for, we should try funding the process and not sticker shock it at every step.

Stagnation is always a structural problem. This is so fixable if we actually exercise the will to do it

It’s not a good analogy. Gigs and stand-up comedy have big audiences. Academic conferences don’t. Hiring a venue, paying for dinner, these things have cost. $600 isn’t unreasonable. By contrast $12,000 to publish a PDF on a website is criminal.

> Academic conferences don’t.

Untrue, as shown by there being a conference in the first place.

Not only but there's plenty of 20 seat comedy nights and tiny drive bars where the performers gets paid.

This isn't a necessary artifact of a structural reality. It's a political choice that we can exercise the freedom to change.

Some conferences are big. Many are 20 people.

Whenever I speak at a tech event, my attendance cost is free. (I'm still on the hook for flight and hotel, usually.)

Those events usually aren't the ones where most of the attendees are presenting, though sometimes things like Bar Camps can get the venue etc. sponsored. Finding sponsors to foot the bill can be harder for conferences for academics who aren't interested in leaving their tenure-track position to configure Kubernetes at a hot new Uber for Guinea Pigs startup.

Still, church picnics, potluck dinners, and wedding parties usually don't cost US$600 a person. Do we really need the Anaheim Convention Center or the Four Seasons Hotel to hang out and chat about capability-secure hardware architecture or isopiestic measurements of deliquescence points? Or could we maybe pitch some circus tents in a field somewhere and rent some folding chairs and tables? Instead of whiteboards we can use 4'x8' melamine sheets.

I like your style. We should start StateFairCon someday

Ooh, that's an excellent point! State fairs never cost US$600 per person, even when you include all the funnel cakes and donut-bun hamburger sandwiches bought from the concessionnaires. Typical admission prices in the US are maybe US$20 per day? But they have plenty of space, lots of conference rooms, bathroom facilities, handicapped accessibility, folding chairs, and so on. I bet you could hold an academic conference at a state fair fairgrounds for under US$100 a person. But I've never heard of a sci-fi con doing this, so maybe there's a fatal flaw in this idea I'm not seeing.

Academic conferences are usually "comfortable" environments with plenty of air conditioning. It might undermine the prestige a bit if we did that.

Or maybe it'd have a different charm than the norm.

It might be worth it if people could present their research without having to fork over US$600 or US$6000 to register for the conference. Air quality is worth a lot, though. I recall falling asleep from too many people crowded into a room at the physics department when they announced they'd discovered the top quark. Fairgrounds in lots of places do have air conditioning.

We held CodeCon in a nightclub --- during the day, when it would normally just be closed. This caused problems for aaronsw, because legally they couldn't let him in, and he didn't want to accept special treatment unavailable to other people his age, so he just didn't attend. Len got pretty mad at me when I took Aaron's side.

Sure, but $600 felt like a massive over expenditure to me.

And there was no conference - this was in 2020, so the entire thing was virtual. No refreshments either. Also, every staff member I met was a “volunteer”.

Also, they are fundraising mechanisms for the professional societies that put them on. The pandemic killing conference attendance no doubt put a lot of them in a budget crunch.

I understood that the $600 is not the attendance fee but am additional charge for the privilege of presenting. The only reason they can get away with that is that people may need to have such things on their CV.

Governments and sponsoring companies should pay for it. The rest of us a presenters and private inviduals should get it free. Knowledge should be free flow not at every steps being VAT-ed.

doesn't it cost to go to the conference?

I would expect the people who are listening to the presentation to be the ones paying, not the one giving the presentation.

It costs a separate $45 to attend as well. If you present, they don’t combine these fees.

Usually, most listeners are presenters too.