Number of papers published or number of citations isn't a measure of the value of someone's research. This over-reliance on metrics is a big part of what's going wrong with academia. A hundred years ago people published when they had something to say, and authors of journals had to literally beg people for submissions.
>Soldiers, and defense in general, are part of the main things a government should provide
So is education. All developed countries spend public money on education.
>In the UK in particular, education used to be tuition-free.
That is my point. There are abundant historical examples of how a thriving university sector can be maintained without each department needing to be run as its own business.
>You are basically paying people to sit in a room and discuss something by themselves. Why does a minimum wage worker have to subsidies that?
In the UK? In the UK a minimum wage worker pays hardly any tax, so they don't subsidise much of anything. If the question is why society should subsidise that, my answer would be that it should do so if it values historical knowledge (assuming that we're still talking about history PhDs). If you are just saying "history sucks, so let's not spend money training people to be historians", then sure, that is a coherent position.
>Soldiers, and defense in general, are part of the main things a government should provide
So is education. All developed countries spend public money on education.
>In the UK in particular, education used to be tuition-free.
That is my point. There are abundant historical examples of how a thriving university sector can be maintained without each department needing to be run as its own business.
>You are basically paying people to sit in a room and discuss something by themselves. Why does a minimum wage worker have to subsidies that?
In the UK? In the UK a minimum wage worker pays hardly any tax, so they don't subsidise much of anything. If the question is why society should subsidise that, my answer would be that it should do so if it values historical knowledge (assuming that we're still talking about history PhDs). If you are just saying "history sucks, so let's not spend money training people to be historians", then sure, that is a coherent position.