[dgfl]

You’re free to vote towards your goals, or move to countries which invest basically nothing in research. There’s plenty of them. I suspect you may not enjoy such great quality of life there.

In case it wasn’t a rhetorical question, they’re in your interest because through the process of building them we improve our understanding of the world, develop new technologies which the industrial system wouldn’t have backed, educate the next generation of engineers and scientists, and inspire the kids that will form the second next generation.

Private research already exists and works well in some fields, mine included. But public research is just as important since it can afford higher risk and longer scope. You can’t begin to count the startups that were created as spin-offs of university research groups.