The problem with 1 and 2 is that it collides with what funding agencies really think they're doing when funding research students and postdocs. They don't think they're funding good research, what they think they're funding is training people who are numerically competent and have broad transferable skills who will leave the field and go and do great things for the economy. This *requires* massive over-production of PhDs and postdocs, with all the problems you touch on. I've tried proposing a different model in UK astronomy, some of which informed the RAS Careers paper (http://www.ras.org.uk/images/stories/ras_pdfs/careers_v12.pdf), but the response from both funders and most academics is that the flow of numbers needs to be kept up, if not expanded. I think while the main goal of PhD and postdoc training continues to be producing people who have no hope of a career in the subject, then the production of good original science will remain secondary. How we persuade those who pay the bills that the production of good science should be primary is an interesting question.