From my experience, most of your ideas have been implemented in different ways in the academic procedures as best as they can. 1. Funding agencies and universi

From my experience, most of your ideas have been implemented in different ways in the academic procedures as best as they can. 1. Funding agencies and universities don't make decisions. Only individuals in those institutions do. And I don't know any individuals who admit to doing assessments based on publication counts. They'd be openly mocked for such an archaic way of thinking. The only people who seem to openly obsess over publication counts are Ph.D. students. 2. Agreed, but output can be measured in different ways besides traditional academic publications. 3. It seems like this is already done, through recommendation letters when people apply, and in external letters during the tenure process. I see the opposite outcomes, whenever I've seen someone with fewer but better publications compared against someone with more but weaker publications, the first is always preferred. Because it's easy for someone to make the case "Person 1 has fewer paper but they're more impactful and they choose riskier problems, an excellent trait" versus someone to make the case for "Person 2 has more papers in quantity so are more productive." Unless of course it's not clear that person 1's papers are actually higher quality, in which case the original premise doesn't hold. 4. This is already the primary factor from what I've seen. That's the whole point of job talks, publications listed on CVs, etc. I've never seen a tenure-track hire without people reading some of the papers listed on the CV, and discussing the presented work in the job talk. 5. Half of the funding agencies now say they're looking for risky ideas, the word "transformative" has been a common part of NSF vocabulary for decades. Originality is one of the NIH core criteria factors, as is criteria about the Investigator themselves. How panelists interpret the criteria is more social and political than a technical thing. Anyways, maybe we probably just live in different academic worlds, but I don't see as much blatant expression of the biases you are describing, and feel like the major goals of your ideas have already been implemented which has led us to the current situation. Maybe not everyone buys into them, but as you say there isn't a way to get a bunch of individuals to follow orders, so the only change that's possible is changes to process which has already happened. I don't agree that we need to add additional bureaucracy like rating applicants on "did they disparage mathematics", which I find extremely problematic. Even the last idea in your edit is already done in every way possible. The MacArthur award, Turing Award, Nobel Prize, various prizes, etc. all give an absolutely top researcher money and prestige, so they can do their thing. I think the best way forward are social solutions, rather than procedural. Convince minds, rather than add bureaucracy.