[thaumasiotes]

> Non-academic labs can't offer tenure because there's no tradition of it outside academia and by its very nature it only has value if an organisation can make a credible commitment to maintain for decades or centuries.

This would imply that it's impossible for non-academic institutions to offer pensions, too. Now, they are certainly moving in that direction, but it seems strange to argue that they can't.

[lmm]

It would imply that prospective workers don't put a lot of value on private companies' pension plans when weighing employment offers, which in my experience is true (employees do perhaps value governmental workers' pensions, because the government is the kind of stable organisation that can make multi-decade commitments). There's also a level of governmental support (high-profile bailouts and the like) of private pensions that lends credibility to pensions, whereas governments seem if anything anti-tenure.