As an academic, I agree with much of the post (although I'd say people who are able to do free, autonomous research is a minority both in academia and in industry. In industry, most people don't own the company, and even those who do often have too many restrictions imposed by clients, time, etc. to do that). But I would like to comment on one detail:
"In short, academic institutions systemically promote exactly the sort of short-term optimization of which, ironically, the private sector is often accused".
Not ironically. Deliberately and consciously. In recent decades, there has been a push to evaluate public services in private sector terms, i.e., basically, economic profitability (and in particular, short-term profitability). At least in my country, this is quite explicit, but I suppose it happens everywhere to a greater or lesser extent. There is a lot of public discourse that academia cannot be an ivory tower, it has to constantly be evaluated and provide proof that what it's doing is useful. It's difficult to obtain funding for basic science, you need to promise immediate practical applications to obtain grants. Papers are increasingly shunned in favor of patents, the academic that "only publishes papers that other academics read" is now a figure of parody or derision. There are even research grants whose main or sole evaluation criterion is "amount of research income generated in the last X months".
So to sum up, the capitalistic mindset of looking at everything in terms of short-term profitability has harmed, and continues harming, academia. But this is not a paradox, it's something quite explicit and deliberate.
"In short, academic institutions systemically promote exactly the sort of short-term optimization of which, ironically, the private sector is often accused".
Not ironically. Deliberately and consciously. In recent decades, there has been a push to evaluate public services in private sector terms, i.e., basically, economic profitability (and in particular, short-term profitability). At least in my country, this is quite explicit, but I suppose it happens everywhere to a greater or lesser extent. There is a lot of public discourse that academia cannot be an ivory tower, it has to constantly be evaluated and provide proof that what it's doing is useful. It's difficult to obtain funding for basic science, you need to promise immediate practical applications to obtain grants. Papers are increasingly shunned in favor of patents, the academic that "only publishes papers that other academics read" is now a figure of parody or derision. There are even research grants whose main or sole evaluation criterion is "amount of research income generated in the last X months".
So to sum up, the capitalistic mindset of looking at everything in terms of short-term profitability has harmed, and continues harming, academia. But this is not a paradox, it's something quite explicit and deliberate.