(Eh. Yes, I think I lost track of that a bit.)

Keeping that in mind: SI has a problem because acting to avoid appearing to exist to give money to the upper ranks means that they can't pay their researchers. There are three broad classes of solutions to this (that I can see):

• Give staff little to no compensation for their work
• Use tricky tactics to try to conceal how much money goes to the staff
• Try to explain to everyone why such a large proportion of the money goes to the staff

All of those seem suboptimal.