Good day:
In no particular order, I'll respond to your thoughtful points:

~tax leech is my moniker. Unfortunately the tilde is not that visible, but it's there :-)

Meanwhile, I wonder if in your country (wherever that is? I've not had time to look up your i.p. address below) your people have had to endure what younger generations here in the USA have most recently. Over the past 15 years, inflation's been about 35%. In contrast, tuition hikes have typically been about 300% (three HUNDRED) percent. I'm already through with obtaining my degrees and I even have a law degree from a so-called "Top Ten" law school, so if anything I'd do well NOT to rock the boat if all I want to do is maintain my competitive advantage. However, like you, I'm not in favor of having a perpetual economic elite. The Roman Empire supposedly fell in part because it developed one. The U.S.A. is supposed to be the land of opportunity. I increasingly believe that so called land is now OFF of our planet.

Now then, here are some additional supposed justifications for continuing to offer academic tenure:

>>>It's protection against the false accusations, against politically trumped up charges, against people who insist you must teach a certain way or risk getting fired.<<<

In response, why don't we also have tenure in district attorneys' offices? Because it's unnecessary to achieve the goals. And in academia (and elsewhere), tenure's counter-productive. It's protectionism, albeit thinly veiled.

If what you call "unsexy research" is nevertheless worthwhile, won't worthwhile institutions keep doing it? Won't government agencies keep offering prizes to get it done? I have yet to see a single academic publicly state that the research (s)he gets paid to do is worthless, but some of the research getting funding is nevertheless worthless. Let the taxpayers decide. It's THEIR money. Academics may be snobs all they like, but when it's with other people's money, some serious self-evaluation needs to take place that currently isn't.

Anyhow, please give me an example of research that canNOT be done in pursuit of a prize as opposed to merely as a result of a tax leeching contract. Prizes may be a blunt instrument, but contracts definitely are. Where are the cures for cancer, AIDS, and so many other maladies that we taxpayers have been promised while the IRS robs each of us at gunpoint? It's time for adequate prize offerings.