I don't get it. You have something against S-Matrix theory? Why do you call it an "industry"?
> funding agencies are largely to blame for the current situation in HEP and how/where research efforts are focused
Current situation in HEP is fine. The whole theoretical physics community decides where research efforts should be focused. No one else can do that even if he wanted to.
S-Matrix was the beginning of fifty years of string and SUSY leading no where beyond some interesting maths (imho). I call it an industry because of the number of people involved and the self-preservation need to keep the funding going.
I would disagree with the idea that the theoretical community decides where efforts should be focused - who ever is paying the bills ultimately makes that decision. Clearly, there are groups within interest areas that make recommendations to those agencies and nominally propose long term plans. But no dollars, no research - plans or not. Communities also tend towards preserving the status quo rather than cutting losses, splitting up and moving on to new things.
If there was more pushback from the funders we would not have seen so many working in and around string theory and susy for such a very long time with so little to show for it. That is not to say nobody should do such research, just that at some point someone has to say this no longer looks like it warrants the effort of so many, bring some new ideas/areas of research for the majority of you.
In the case of HEP experimentalists, the problem is magnified as the monies involved are very large as are the number of people, many of whom have nothing directly to do with physics (techs, etc). CERN quotes a figure of 17,500 including 2500 of their own staff. All involved have a very vested interest in making sure things do not change meaningfully and that upgrades continue to be made to LHC until funding is secured for another collider.
Otherwise where do they go? The notion that it is not in the best interest of the entire physics community or the wider public tends to fall on deaf ears when your career and paycheck are on the cutting block.
> S-Matrix was the beginning of fifty years of string and SUSY
S-Matrix is a scattering matrix - a basic notion in QFT. S-Matrix theory is an attempt of axiomatization of particle physics with S-Matrix analyticity axioms as a basis. It still makes sense to this day - and still at the brink on unresolved questions in QFT, like QCD vacuum and/or confinement. A popular notion that S-Matrix theory was "replaced" with QCD is bogus (not to mention that bulk of publications by Gell-Mann was on S-Matrix theory). String theory is just a thing that was inspired by S-Matrix theory. And SUSY has almost nothing to do with it.
> I would disagree with the idea that the theoretical community decides where efforts should be focused - who ever is paying the bills ultimately makes that decision.
It is a very naive view of how research works. It is like saying that who ever pays the bills gets to decide what startup is going to succeed.
I don't get it. You have something against S-Matrix theory? Why do you call it an "industry"?
> funding agencies are largely to blame for the current situation in HEP and how/where research efforts are focused
Current situation in HEP is fine. The whole theoretical physics community decides where research efforts should be focused. No one else can do that even if he wanted to.