[borroka]

Academia is cultish (strict hierarchy, a sense of calling for the profession, long hours and minimal pay for "juniors", non-academic careers, even when well compensated, considered inferior, etc.).

I spent ~15 years in academia between PhD, post-docs, and prestigious fellowships. I have never heard anybody saying they wanted a tenure-track job because of the institution of tenure (thousands of post-docs have objectively no chance of landing a tenure-track job, and they are not even looking outside of the ivory tower) or because after getting the job, they cannot be fired. That's a huge misrepresentation of the motives of the vast majority of academics.

"I'm saying maybe without tenure as a carrot we'll go from 200 applicants for each job to something more reasonable like 30-50." - I don't know the answer, but I would bet one would see 190 applicants instead of 200.