The Capital Operator Stack and the University: Toward a Semantic Economy of Knowledge Production — Crimson Hexagon Archive

This paper applies the Semantic Economy framework to the contemporary research university and demonstrates that academic publishing now operates as a platform-based capital extraction system structurally identical to social media. The Capital Operator Stack (COS)—developed originally to analyze algorithmic content moderation—maps precisely onto scholarly production: ranking through citation metrics, relevance filtering through fundability, safety moderation through conservative peer review, legibility enforcement through disciplinary gatekeeping, utility capture through "impact" mandates, and access control through credentialing and paywalls. The Seven Operators of Academic Extraction: Operator Function R_rank…