I sympathize with a lot of these complaints, but the thing that really bothers me about a lot of these academia resignations, or complaints about the academic job market, is that there is definitely an expectation that a path (e.g., a job) should be provided for a young researcher to do whatever he or she wants, research-wise. I really wish that graduate school was viewed less as a job tunnel/funnel and more like undergrad, where it is an opportunity to learn (and network, and signal, and so forth) but ultimately, it's up to the student to pick a path, with the skills and reputation earned along the way.

To provide a counter to the hopelessness:

As much as I love the academy, and research, I never wanted to be a professor. After my postdoc I started a research and consulting company (thanks HN for many wise words of advice about going solo). I firmly believe that, in contrast to the hierarchical and managerial state of academic (and a lot of industrial) research, there is a valuable role to be played by professional scientists. So many of the badass scientists I know have such a small fraction of their time that they can devote to actually carrying out research[1], that all of their wisdom, efficiency and so forth is somewhat wasted as they go about their managerial lives as professors or industrial scientists. I don't think it has to be this way.

I haven't been doing this forever, but so far it's been great. I have been doing some interesting, research-oriented consulting (and some not so interesting, too), which puts money in the bank. It also lets me see some of the problems that industrial scientists deal with. I'm in geoscience and the consulting so far is all in energy, and unsolved problems there are just as cool if not cooler than the question du jour in academic work--and some of the problems are exactly the same... And it's very rewarding to be brought in on some of these projects, and help hard-working people out.

I also spend a good chunk of my time, half maybe, doing my own research, collaborating with others, and writing proposals to NSF and other public agencies. I of course have more ideas than I can ever hope to see through, but I feel very free to work on whatever I see fit, even if it's a bit outside of my experience and comfort zone.

In the end, I am hoping (and betting) that my accumulating strengths as a professional researcher, combined with the falling costs of a lot of science, particularly computational science and online journal access, will allow me to be as productive or more as I would managing graduate students and post-docs, and a lot happier. I also think that by doing consulting instead of teaching (which I enjoy but not enough), I can have a bit higher maximum potential income as well, and take a month off to raft through Peru when I get the hankering.

OK, so just to summarize, this ended up more biographical than I wanted: I think there is a market for professional, non-academic scientists, both in academic-type (i.e. gov't-funded) and industrial research. It seems to be the road less traveled but if you're not into that then science might not be your thing. It might be very hard at times, and hopefully you have a good support network.

[1]: I do believe that writing proposals is actually doing a very important part of science by making you get your shit together and vet yourself. It'd be fun if it wasn't for the existential pressure.