and because there's effectively no accountability, it's ripe to be gamed with fraud and cronyism. Although it is not a business commodity. The knee-jerk reaction of the 20th century is to fund public benefit causes using the government, but that's especially irresponsible when there is no accountability. It's a problem compounded by diminishing returns on science (low hanging fruit has been picked) creating a greater demand on money, a top-down funding structure, and nationalistic measuring contests. None of these are conducive to good science being done.
There is a demand for science. People like contributing to something bigger than themselves. Just, the demand may not be as big as we 'hope for it to be'. But 'get it done now' might not be the best approach to some parts of science... Often times discoveries that were a total schlep to get through become nearly trivialized, shortly after discovery, by an orthogonal set of technical enablements.
> there's effectively no accountability, it's ripe to be gamed with fraud and cronyism
Are you talking about NIH funding here, or crowdfunding? The accountability for government funds is vigilant (some may even say restrictive), as anyone who's applied for a grant or sat on a study section will tell you.
I disagree with the accountability aspect from experience, but I concur about cronyism, which is a major bias that the system is not set up to handle. It takes time to get good at winning grants, thus older applicants (tenured professors) have a much greater advantage over new ones (postdocs). There is a cultural sentiment that the best years of one's research career are near the end after amassing knowledge (or influence). This leads to many PIs shunning retirement and dampening enthusiasm for any new recruits.
I don't see how you can make claims about accountability.
The government is somewhat vigilant about fraud, but incredibly not-vigilant about bad ideas (Arsenic life comes to mind). But the accountability I refer to pretty clearly in my screed is long-term, 50-200 year accountability. You don't go back in time and rescind the grant of some scientist whose work was less than marginally relevant. And there is plenty of that stuff (Nanoputians come to mind).
There is a demand for science. People like contributing to something bigger than themselves. Just, the demand may not be as big as we 'hope for it to be'. But 'get it done now' might not be the best approach to some parts of science... Often times discoveries that were a total schlep to get through become nearly trivialized, shortly after discovery, by an orthogonal set of technical enablements.