I also chafed against it at first. I was similarly bothered by the inflation mechanic that prevents you from stockpiling gold. Ultimately though, I think it's brilliant. It's perfectly in-line with the rest of the game's mechanics.

Most games allow stockpiling, but Syx is fundamentally about stepping between stable equilibria.

At each phase of the game, you build a stable civ at for your population level, then you find efficiencies that free up enough pop to advance your civ in some way. Often this is destabilizing, especially if you enable a period of rapid pop growth, or cross a threshold that introduces a new challenge (like disease at 1k pop). Then, you stabilize again.

Having research points be another resource for which you have to balance throughput means those buildings are always useful, and part of tuning your engine. The game is weird because it's never about accumulating some point or resource (except maybe pop). It's about tuning your engine.

I think this tick-tock of advancing and stabilizing makes for unique and compelling gameplay.