Comment by dasudasu

The topic of funding is a recurrent one in these types of discussions. There are always more people wanting to do science than what is available in funding. There needs to be a process to allocate resources that takes into account competency for the job. Just granting it at random or equally is probably very very far from optimal if it means that an exceptional PI cannot even do the things to push his/her research to the next level. Research funding is a bit like a command economy in that there are no market forces that can be drawn upon to just sort it naturally, so of course it ends up being especially thorny.