I cannot see how their investments lead to higher societal productivity and thus more societal wealth. It seems more like a wealth transfer (of advertising dollars), and overall, a way to make society less productive (by wasting its time).
Let every entity play its role. For private enterprise, their selfish pursuit of profits under a regulatory atmosphere actually helps society improve on so many levels as a net effect.
That said, issues like this cannot be rigorously analyzed while ignoring the different contexts, changes in costs/benefits and the different periods in the historical development of the country. Thinking these background issues have remained constant will invariably lead to fallacies.
Finally, we may need to think about these matters differently; it's 2017, there are many ways of being innovative without restricting it to your national boundaries or geography. One could easily be accused of tunneling if she thinks that all American exploits of science and technology must happen within the boundaries of United States in this century to qualify as an improvement of American society.
The stage is bigger and the system has become orders of magnitude more complex.
[0] http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/fr...