But this is a fallacy in our thinking. One, that money not spent there doesn’t necessarily ‘go' into the things you mentioned. If the angst is to create a society ( economic, political and cultural) that could always prioritize all the money to what we feel is the most critical needs of humanity then that raises a host of new questions. 1. Who decides what is priority? 2. How does that predicate long-term growth and prosperity of species? 3. How do you balance trying to find step changes as opposed to solving important problems with only current knowledge and sentience?

All that money(valuable resource) can be used somewhere else is a dangerous argument that if taken to it’s anal, theoretical end will take us all the way back to the age where we didn’t know fire or tools. Our story of growth is one of discovering, exploring and inventing our way out of major problems mostly unintentionally and in a quest to satiate our curiosity. Taking that away is taking away everything.