I'd tend to agree. And we should encourage other fellow non-super-rich people to join our cause rather than casting out those who disagree or we do our common enemies' work of becoming divided-and-conquered.

The above, I meant it as increase in degrees towards these objectives explicitly rather than presuming the existing system were perfect or neutral. IIRC, institutional affiliation lends a degree of credibility but grant writing effectiveness and form filling ability are prerequisites to increasing the probability of winning grant awards. I don't know how a large disbursement organization could improve on fairness in selection without requiring documentation and convincing proposals in a format convenient for efficient, fair review. Weakening this process would encourage an appearance of arbitrariness and favoritism, if not actually. I don't believe for a second that DOGE or similar non-expert "experts" can "improve" anything they touch when meaningful improvement requires domain expertise, careful assessment, and usually stakeholder buy-in. At a high level, it appears the current US regime is incrementally remolding and reverting its society, industry, academia, and institutions from more egalitarian-based to more feudal/prerogative-based.