Exponentially more money isn't just sign of institutional decay. Resources/energy required to discover X ray is a grain of sand on a beach compared to energies required to discover Higg's boson.
That's just energy. Compare cost to make an X ray tube vs LHC.
Science used to be able to snatch low hanging fruit. Now those are picked, but people still expect same rate of innovation.
This sounds like the decay, not the rising cost.
I’m sure every researcher understands this, but not every executive or shareholder.
The lack of trust in your workers / focus on hyper growth is the issue.
Like you say, discoveries become more expensive over time, but we’re seeing similar institutional decay in non research institutions as well, so that can’t be the only factor.
Like how much more expensive is it to teach a single college student now than it was 20 years ago. In all honesty, probably much cheaper. Especially when you start looking at online classes.
So why is college in the states so much more expensive? It’s largely because of administrative bloat, which, among many other weird incentives, are symptoms of decay.
And why would you need administrators? IMO, it’s because you’re unwilling to trust small departments or individuals to tech effectively.
> Like you say, discoveries become more expensive over time, but we’re seeing similar institutional decay in non research institutions as well,
Sure, but they also might be the issue of ending on the Saturation curve. For example, chip manufacture is getting more and more expensive because it's getting up to the limit of an atom. That's caused by physics and not economics. What is caused by economics is the expectation of exponential growth.
That's just energy. Compare cost to make an X ray tube vs LHC.
Science used to be able to snatch low hanging fruit. Now those are picked, but people still expect same rate of innovation.