I feel like I should mention you are focusing on agenda-driven research here, and that is a dead-end street that inevitably ends in stagnation.

Basic or "blue skies" research is what drives innovation. Agenda-driven research is inherently limited to iteration, and may suffer from diminishing returns that may eventually convince people to stop investing in research altogether.

Sometimes you need to pay for research that has no obvious value whatsoever. That is how you get lasers, genome sequencing, stem cell therapy, etc.

A narrow focus on agenda-driven research is indirectly and unintentionally an attempt to create a "dark ages" of scientific progress.