[Symmetry]

Bell labs was funded from the profits of a legal monopoly, and the money spent on it was used to justify the continuance of that monopoly. You do see some private basic research these days as with Google in robotics or Microsoft in quantum computers but its fairly rare and small compared to government funded research.

And pharma companies do a lot of research but it's almost entirely applied, taking the basic processes discovered by NIH funded research and figuring out how to turn them into feasible drugs. You need both halves there to sustain our current progress.

[intended]

Bell labs also took in and benefitted from, the larger tapestry of experts and scientists that were attracted by the US education and research machine.

[jsbg]

> it's almost entirely applied, [...] you need both halves there to sustain our current progress

why do we need to subsidize "half" of these pharma companies' research? if they can't get it for free then they'll have to find a way to do it themselves at a profit