Početkom Svibnja vijest iz Massachusettsa je da tamošnji zakonodavci imaju na umu, navodno zbog zavida elitnim najbogatijim sveučilištima u lošim ekonomskim vremenim, oporezovati ih sa godišnjom stopom od 2.5% na iznose zaklade iznad $1 milijarde. Naravno, zakonodavcima vjerojatno treba i novi izvor prihoda zbog loše ekonomske situacije. “Necessity is mother of all inventions”, ide izreka. Njih 9 u državi bi godišnje napunilo kofer sa $1.4 milijarde, a pošto Harvard sam im zakladu od +$35 milijardi, platio bi više od pola tog poreznog prihoda.
Blogeri su reagirali. Harvardov prof. Mankiw je predložio da se, ukoliko taj prijedlog prođe (vjerojatno neće), Harvard postepeno preseli na drugu lokaciju, negdje na jug. Prominentni Harvardov alumni i bloger prof. Brad DeLong priču je proširio na efikasnost organizacije i proširenja sveučilišta, usporedivši Harvard sa UCLA i otvorio pitanje što Harvard radi sa svojom najvećom zakladom na svijetu. Ukratko, Harvard je 1960. imao oko 1200 studenata, danas ih ima oko 1600. UCLA je od 1960. sa 5000 studenata, danas došao na 40 000. UCLA je tako napravio više limunade iz dostupnih limuna, unatoč relativno slabijoj početnoj poziciji. Drugim riječima, Harvardova proizvoda funkcija je upitne efikasnosti, ali ne zbog neznanja administratora, već, moguće, zbog modela upravljanja sveučilištem. DeLong daje (za nas na ovim prostorima posebno zanimljivo) objašnjenje:
“Somebody last week–was it Jan de Vries? John Ellwood? Somebody else? I forget who, but it is not original to me–said that the right model for Harvard over the past century is Yugoslavia. Remember the story of the Yugoslavian socialist worker-managed firm? If you add another worker to the firm, that worker gets a pro-rata share of the firm’s value added. The firm’s value added has a component attributable to the firm’s capital stock, a component attributable to the ideas embedded in the firm, a component attributable to the firm’s market position, and a component attributable to the workers. Hire another worker, and only the last of these goes up: the first three do not, and so average compensation falls.
This means that a worker-managed firm is likely to shrink whenever it gets good news that makes it more productive–the larger is the value added due to ideas, capital, or market position, the more expensive does it become for the existing workers to replace workers who leave, let alone hire enough workers to expand. While a competitive market capitalist firm responds to good news about its productivity and value to society by increasing employment, a Yugoslavian-model market socialist firm responds to good news about its productivity and value to society by shrinking. On this analysis, the very success of Harvard over the past two generations together with its degree of worker management has created enormous internal pressures not to expand, the better to share out the surplus among the existing stakeholders.”