Anthropologist Graeber mentions neoliberalism. But he claims that even though funding for blue-sky research shrank since 1970's as percentage, it's still ahead

Anthropologist Graeber mentions neoliberalism. But he claims that even though funding for blue-sky research shrank since 1970's as percentage, it's still ahead in absolute numbers. So there's also another factor: (http://thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars http://thebaffler.com/past/of_flying_cars) "What has changed is the bureaucratic culture. The increasing interpenetration of government, university, and private firms has led everyone to adopt the language, sensibilities, and organizational forms that originated in the corporate world. Although this might have helped in creating marketable products, since that is what corporate bureaucracies are designed to do, in terms of fostering original research, the results have been catastrophic." "The growth of administrative work has directly resulted from introducing corporate management techniques. Invariably, these are justified as ways of increasing efficiency and introducing competition at every level. What they end up meaning in practice is that everyone winds up spending most of their time trying to sell things..." Also mentions other factors, like concentrating resources into a handful of big projects (like The Human Genome Project).