Comment by perching_aix

I have considered this angle before, but landed on that it's not like anyone was ever actually going to do so.

I tend to think of the market kind of like a social media feed, i.e. engagement matters. Even if they're establishing these results at an overhead, they're doing so with money that otherwise would probably never be spent on these problems, or would only be over very long timeframes.

Whether this is sustainable is where what you describe comes in. And it may not be, but that doesn't mean it isn't impressive. Lots of cool technologies in history that failed to justify their stay.