One of the side effects of lack of access to funding/ financial reward for work done by academics/ scientists in universities/ research facilities all over the world, is that it leaves them open to be lured into accepting financial reward from large state actors who then are able to force political pressure on the academics who have come to be dependant on the state in question. This has been a major tactic of the ccp who, for the past few decades, have established a massive funding machine that coopts and entices academics, scientists and researchers right across the spectrum of academia all over the world. I agree with Jleger that providers of value should be compensated and I feel that there needs to be a massive overhaul of the way that we think about how, as a society, we fund knowledge creation. My bias is that the state should be kept out of that process as much as possible and that means it's up to the individual , on a societal level, to innovate a way to pay for what we benefit from so that those who are working on furthering that benefit can be free from being beholden to powers with ulterior motives.