I agree that (4) is a problem but there is also some signal in brand name. There is such a flood of (mostly low quality) papers that it's impossible to look at

I agree that (4) is a problem but there is also some signal in brand name. There is such a flood of (mostly low quality) papers that it's impossible to look at their content to judge what's worth reading. If you want to be at the forefront of research you can't wait to see which one stand the test of time. That's why I fall back on trusting brand name labs. They are "staking" their reputation on a paper. If a paper turns out to be absolute BS their reputation suffers. Even if all talent is equally distributed, this makes it more likely that papers from brand name researchers and institutions are carefully reviewed because they have something to lose. This isn't right, but what is the alternative? (7) Because most resarch happens in industry labs. Many university academics have left, or at least have dual positions in university and industry. (2) IMO paperswithcode didn't solve much. It's nice, but just publishing code doesn't fix any of the incentive problems. You still don't know how that code was generated. Most likely by tuning random knobs until something worked.