A lot of basic research is unprofitable. Private industry has little incentive to pick up that slack. Individual philanthropists might throw basic research a

A lot of basic research is unprofitable. Private industry has little incentive to pick up that slack. Individual philanthropists might throw basic research a bone here and there, but the most fundamental basic research is completely orthogonal to profit motives. We know about the basic research which led to enormous profits, but that's because of survivor bias. Almost all basic research leads nowhere or takes centuries to mature, and in the rare exceptional cases, it isn't like you can enforce a patent on laws of physics. What we'll get from industry funding is an even bigger circus of 'applied' science (highly credentialed people drawing lines through points and obfuscating everything they say and selling it all as science)