A huge contributor to this imo is the grant system and how it works particularly at very large research institutions and universities. Typically the only people

A huge contributor to this imo is the grant system and how it works particularly at very large research institutions and universities. Typically the only people with the means and time to do "just for curiosity" / fundamental research are people in long-term professor / research positions where they are allowed to pursue whatever they want (as long as they are frequently published). Grants work against this, as they create an incentive to work on specific, often more short term projects / applications rather than fundamental questions. In this way, injecting money into academia via grants actually reduces the amount of fundamental research being done, because a majority of researchers are going to chase the grants aka the short term interests of corporations and governments rather than do less financially rewarding fundamental research.