Ok, but he is owed a decent salary for performing an important job. Without guys like this, we don't have a next generation of physicists (most of whom will move into the private sector).
'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.
the incentives, the logistics and finances of how we get to a point like that -- well that's where it gets muddier.
One man can make a video lesson and teach millions, so more educators doesn’t mean more educated.
You can change the teacher:student ratio and still improve the number of educated. If you think this is false, then anything beyond 1:1 tutors is bad. Yet UCLA doesn’t operate on 1:1 ratios.
Finally, what makes you think there will be less educators? Very likely UCLA can rely on the rich and nerdy people who are willing to subsidize their own careers. This already happens in many fields.
Really finally, this is a shit practice. I’d like to see an audit of where the money goes such that the most student focused educators become last in line to get paid.
A here does not imply B. If it did then the natural conclusion is that the world only needs one singular educator.
In reality there's a sliding scale where more students to a given educator results in lower quality education, but a greater number of educated. The art is balancing these concerns.
Anything beyond it isn't bad, per se, but it is less optional.
Academia is, in essence, a multi-level marketing scheme that produces more of itself, and will (if given unlimited resources from other areas of society) expand until it takes all resources simply replicating more of itself.
Many poor countries have enormously bloated education sectors.
There are plenty of people who would be totally happy to step into this professor's shoes at his current rate of pay just to have a position in academia. We have too many PhDs—there are more people who want a position in academia than academia can support.
We're not faced with the prospect of not being able to train a next generation of physicists, but there's a real possibility that the next generation doesn't view academia as the ideal place to be—the physics equivalent of Broadway. If that happens, fewer people will put up with low-valued positions and a dangled tenure carrot, and the college job market will adapt.
In the meantime we're not going to solve the problem of academic jobs being overvalued by the workforce by artificially inflating pay for the lucky few who landed an academic job at all.