Every option has its place (at least in theory). When you have a Manufacturing bonus and not enough food, use Factories.
Talking about current Crusade: Would you say there is a point to building factories? Is there anything that factories do better than food+pop? Because I don't. It can be calculated. I did so in the 'Beyond 2.6'-thread (page 5 or so). There is
objectively no reason to ever use factories or research labs in current crusade.
When you say:
There is NO agreement that several different options should have equivalent outcomes.
Then food-pop vs. pure mfg/research is the prime example I would think of. They dont have equivalent outcomes.
Would you say, nothing should be done about this?
I'm not arguing whether we should call this balance or not yet.
...Lets actually do that:
Please stop referring to "balance" among the planetary management options. "Game balance" refers to equity among opponents - i.e. players - whom we agree should have equivalent opportunities to win.
And what happens if player one uses management option A while player 2 uses management option B, while the two options don't have equivalent outcomes? The players are inbalanced due to using different strategies. If you say balance only refers to both players having access to management option A, so both can need to use A when wanting to win, then your definition of balance is so narrow it is not practical for designing a game with big variety, which is the point.
The only point I see as arguable in this thread is not refering to it as balancing, because OP meant 'pacing' instead of it. A game with bad pacing mans all management options take ages or too short. But as soon as we are talking pop vs. factories, it is balance territory.
Or whatever word you want to call this, but as pointed out at the start, it is a very real issue, that needs to be considered.