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I think you could also say the same about gambling, porn and other questionable industries.

The thing is, it's usually much easier making money off these things then making money from solving impactful problems.

If you're a regular joe and you could spend your next 5 years with a 100% chance of making millions for finding exploits, or a 0.01% chance of solving P=NP, I think the irrational decision would be picking the latter.

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The problem isn't that they spend 5 years making fuck-you money.

The problem is that they don't realize that they can stop once they have it.

I don't know what's the quantitative trend.

I do know of several founders whose first company was a nasty ad-tech company (spyware), and after making their millions, their second company is a much more honorable digital health company.

You probably can find examples where such people can keep on creating nasty companies, so it would be interesting to see if there was a research about whether or not people pursue more honorable goals after they get lots of cash.

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