It's not nearly that simple.
> Then its not an university any more is it?
> You could always go and start an independent R&D company.
a) MPIs are publicly funded.
b) If you want to do research, do not ever start a company. In terms of overhead, that's even worse than being a tenured professor.
> Fucking around with uni's to employ people that nobody
> wants to employ is just fucked up.
Don't believe that the current system is a product of free market forces. It's bullshit, fueled by weird anachronistic traditions and byzantine funding channels.
> Correct me if I'm wrong - but with PhD's its the usual
> affair - softer the field, bigger the unemployment -
> meaning that there aren't nearly as many jobless PhD's
> in physics, medicine and chemistry as there are in
> economics, literature,...
To a certain extent, that's true. Don't be a non-genius, not well-connected sociology/literature/whatever PhD. You'll be unemployed, or earn 5k$ a year. However, you're severely oversimplifying the actual dynamics.
There's a employability sweet spot on the hard-to-soft-science scale. Computer science, certain (NOT ALL) branches of mathematics and physics, chemistry, engineering? Go for it. Here, the industry-academia membrane is fairly permeable, funding isn't too much of a problem (because large chunks of the industry live off your stuff), and working conditions are good. You can do plenty of consulting on the side.
Theoretical physics? Obscure branches of mathematics? Astrophysics? You're very much fucked. Not as much as an art history major, no, but it's pretty bad. Most importantly, the life sciences (which includes everything from microbiology to neuropsychology): it's a nightmarish rat race. If you do something biomedicine-y, you'll get funding. But the number of people you're competing with is ridiculous. Researchers spend years and years as post-docs, in giant labs, without a chance to get to the top. Some disciplines are highly relevant for medicine etc. but there aren't that many industry positions. Even if you're in virology, competition is fierce -- because unlike chemical engineering, these fields are highly appealing for millions of biology undergraduates.
All these blog posts come from people in life sciences. I'm hardly surprised by that.
> So what really should be done is maybe stop educating so
> many people that nobody wants to hire?
How is this not "fucking around with unis"?