At one point in my career, I've been a CTO of a startup company. I worked 12-14 hours a day, including weekends. My relationship with the CEO was bad, and he actively added "senior tech leads" to the company to compete with me.
One day, I arrived to the office, and stood in the hallway across our office door.
I froze. I couldn't physically move. I stood there, unable to move, for 2.5 hours until someone passed by and saw me.
I'm sharing this story so that readers may have an idea of what severe burnout may look like. It's not that I didn't want to move - I couldn't, my brain didn't let me. I lost my ability to control my body at that point.
Universities everywhere become corrupt, as performance doesn't matter for the staff to be paid.
The only thing that matters is political power, both for the hosting country subsidies as well as outside donations (Qatar massive donation that made Harvard president claim that a call to murder all Jews is ok is a great example).
I have no idea how to fix this at this point.
I just know that trust in academic institutions is very, very low. And justifiably so.
By definition - if you want to immigrate to the US (legally) you must be successful.
For example, L1 Visa, will require your company to employ at least 15 people in the US by the end of it. So you either start a company successful enough to hire at least 15 people, or you go home.
If you aspire to live in the US at the end of it, it's a hell of a motivator.
I'll just add - this beneficial system is largely being closed down due to illegal immigration in the US, which "fills" the caps in many places. It may be hurtful to the US long term.
Starting a war and losing it should have consequences.
They tried to genocide the Jews in 1948 and lost.
If there are no consequences for what they did - they'll just keep doing it until they'll be successful. Which, coincidentally, is exactly what Hamas said about Oct 7 - that they'll repeat it again and again.