You can't even do long term work at a university because you still need the funds for your employees / lab / equipment / materials / subjects. The university do

You can't even do long term work at a university because you still need the funds for your employees / lab / equipment / materials / subjects. The university doesn't give you those funds, they only pay your salary, when you're tenured, so if you have tenure but no grant funding, it's just you in an office with a blackboard. Sometimes that is enough (like in pure math) but there are lots of pursuits that are completely ruled out by the absence of additional funding.