[TheOtherHobbes]

Here's a partial list of things that could have had more funding over the past twenty five years, and which are ripe for game-changer advances without needing completely new science:

Renewable energy Social housing Aerospace AI Quantum computing Transport infrastructure Novel Internet distribution/5G SETI Biotech Fusion power Next-generation operating systems

There's been an uptick in momentum in some of these over the last few years, but they're easily at least a decade behind where they could have been if money had been dropped on them from a helicopter instead of being wasted on (say) invading Afghanistan, and keeping banks fed and watered with QE.

The real problem is Wall St. So many PhDs moved there when they could have been doing useful, original research. And Wall St cannibalised academia in other ways, pressuring universities to offer stupendous ROI at the expense of genuine education and research, and warping what used to be a productive culture into yet another hyper-competitive sweat shop.

Financialisation has a social reverse Midas effect - it looks like it's producing gold in the short term, but over longer scales everything it touches turns to shrivelled crap.