I could do research. I'm smart enough and all that. (we can argue about who is smartest and all that, probably institutions are right to not come knocking at my door trying to hire me - but in the end if somehow I ended up at a university I could do at least okay at research) My day job is not doing basic research though, so it would take me some time to come up to speed on the important hard problems that researchers are working on. Then more time to contribute.

There is nothing unique about me above. There are a lot of smart people around who are not doing research. Basic research is important to progress humanity, but for every person in basic research thousands are needed in the more applied areas to take known research results and apply them to life thus making our life better.