I know absolutely nothing about string theory, or the culture of high-energy physics, but I don't buy the pecuniary argument you are making. You aren't considering the downwind effects of allowing academic rot. The Bourbaki—and their acolytes—also sponged up only a tiny amount of academic funding, but a fever in the pulpit can spread out into the pews; we've seen the "New Math" paradigm damage a generation of primary-and-secondary-school students. Even today, we have issues with engineers not understanding that a derivative is a slope and an integral is an area—due in no small part to a cartel of bad actors in mathematical research. Allowing bad behavior in high-value and influential positions has consequences beyond a waste of government expenditure; a president could turn a democracy into a banana republic, and we would have issues beyond his salary of a few hundred thousand dollars being wasted.