Terence Tao on the suspension of UCLA grants

Governments typically fund research because 1) it's seen as beneficial for the country, and hence falls under the remit of governments in democratic countries and 2) the uncertainty, time frame, or lack of direct commercialization of research typically means the private sector will not invest in it.

Your suggestion is saying that research should be privatised, and shows very little thought about how research works and who benefits from it.

Research 50 years ago, sure. Research now is very different. It’s short term, chasing money, trends, citations, prestige, hierarchy, academic power, and applications. Public should fund only the useful part of it.

You clearly didn't read the article. Dr. Tao provides a concrete example of the type of funding that very recently lead to an order of magnitude speedup of MRI imaging and likely has many military uses he is not allowed to speak about (my speculation but I'd bet on it). Your statement is false.

Your Panglossian description of the purpose of publicly-funded research shows very little understanding of reality.

Nothing has changed. What you describe today existed 50 years ago, and what you describe as being research 50 years ago, exists today.

The actions of the administration serve to force all academics not behaving as you describe research to start doing so, though. The criticism you have, is manufactured.

You make this statement as if it's fact. The actual reality of the matter is that neither you nor I know how research would progress were the government not stepping in and spending on our behalf. Your kind of argument is what is used to justify increasing amounts of government taxation and spending, over trusting the private sector to figure out ways of doing so, and the suggestion that government is the only way of incentivising the research you speak of is entirely lacking in imagination and faith in basic human ingenuity to solve problems.

Yes, there are coordination problems for projects at some scale, for which government involvement makes it possible, however these are far fewer than we are made to believe.

There are tons of labs at universities that are privately funded. It’s not common but there’s plenty of them. And the one I know best is probably the top in the world for what it does (niche in physics)