Meta alone has spent $36B on VR. To put this in perspective, iPhone development cost $3.6B. It’s the fastest, largest single investment into a new technology. https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-lost-30-billion-on-meta...
For the cost of the object, you could set up a university program to figure out Anglo cost disease, then build ~10 subway lines at Japanese costs.
Asking why our society funds things the way they do is a very reasonable and responsible question
(And possibly gotten a better outcome, seeing as Delta has a helluva lot more experience than Facebook with ergonomics and normal people)