You don't know anyone is really worth it. That's why it's called "research." You pay smart people to explore being smart, because even though most of the effort and money are wasted every so often something wonderful falls out.

Try building GPS without relativity. Try building modern chip designs, lasers, or many medical applications without quantum theory.

It's no different to funding start ups. Most fail. A few win big.

But... a room sharing startup is still utterly trivial compared to finding life on other planets or inventing a new kind of computing. Or game changers like EM theory, quantum theory, relativity, Shannon's information theory, or Turing/Church.

And a room sharing startup is still vastly more useful than the weaponised parasitism of most of the financial sector.

Academics are not the problem. The problem is poor allocation of resources, especially creativity and intelligence - all of which have been badly warped by the peculiar value system propagated by contemporary economics in ways which have left them far less productive than they have been in the past.