How do you define a breakthrough? Maybe breakthroughs are happening in other disciplines that will actually end up being connected to theoretical physics. Maybe we are having breakthroughs so often in other areas (computing, astronomy) that they hardly seem like breakthroughs anymore. Maybe someone has already had that paradigm-changing idea but it has gone unrecognized so far.
I agree that the system is flawed. It has always been flawed. Breakthroughs happen anyway as far as I can tell... they operate more outside the system than within it.
