[District5524]

A great point! I beleive today the main problem is no longer the amount of human labor needed to feed or clothe, but to have access to those universities/labs/companies that have the necessary resources to enable meaningful research that humanity values. Costs of creating food and clothe have plummeted - this is good from any possible point of view, and clearly shows we do no longer "need" inequlity from these perspectives. However, access to human institutions does not follow the same democratization and pricefall. In several fields (space, medical and material sciences), advances we yearn for require lots of capital/military power. In many fields, innovations are tied to huge amounts of money to be spent (mostly accessible only in one particular capital market of the world). But even in "cheaper" fields (like mathematics, economics etc.) simply being heard requires working in prestiguous universities. And many of those have no choice but to select and hire people based on their previous work or their financial capabilities. Thus, reinforcing the same stratification as we've seen with food and clothing, and slowing the process of finding the right bright minds to do what they excel at in greater numbers. It's quite unlikely we will solve any major part of this social problem before 2086 (or any projected population peak)... People seem to be still stuck in celebrity culture in politics and everywhere.

[simpaticoder]

It's hard to differentiate between transients and steady-state on a short time-line. The "research factory" model, I believe, is a transient, at least in physics, sustained by the low-hanging fruit left between industrialization and now. Progress is slowing down asymptotically approaching zero. And I think that's okay - consider that the progenitors of the current approach all had day jobs, all of them did this in addition because they HAD to do it. As long as society allows people to have sufficient free time, we'll still get progress in the foundations of physics. (Note that this argument does NOT apply to capital intensive experimentation, e.g. the LHC, space telescopes, or fusion research).

Journeyman physics isn't all bad, and in fact can be quite good. Not only do you not have to worry about the social, administrative, political and funding headaches of academia, you are also not suffused in the always reasonable-sounding groupthink that persistently tells you what can and cannot be done, what should and should not be questioned. I strongly believe that the next truly big shift in physics, if it ever comes, must come from an outsider. (And if that happens, ironically, we'll have another period of fruitful professional academic physics, and later another iteration of this same discussion).