[jonathanstrange]

If non-experts are in charge of individual funding, then you're virtually guaranteed to get nonsensical decisions. It couldn't possibly work, and even if you got it to work, the results would be abysmal.

> Can you see why funding something with no accountability might be considered problematic?

Maybe you're confusing budget decisions with funding and hiring decisions. These are fundamentally different. Universities and research institutions, as well as national funding authorities, get budgets that are decided politically, i.e., by elected representatives. These can have broad categories and guidelines or preferred research areas (e.g. "excellence initiatives"). Budgets are usually allocated well in advance, for instance our national funding authority gets budget security for 4 year periods (if I'm not mistaken). How they spend it is dictated by political guidelines for the respective period and plenty of complicated national and international laws.

In contrast, I was talking about hiring decisions and decisions about individual funding. How can it not be obvious to you that these decisions need to be made by experts on the basis of CVs and scientific project proposals, not by politicians or other laymen?