Is advancing the technology of a civilization a worthy goal?

If yes, then getting rich only accidentally contributes to advancing knowledge and technology.

It could accidentally (because the goal is to get rich, not anything else) make a huge contribution. It could also contribute almost nothing. Plenty of people have gotten rich by finding a slightly cheaper way to either make or distribute (or both) a commodity. We can look at webapps as a kind of commodity.

The general public almost never wants the early or even medium term benefits or a world changing technology. So if you only ever advance by what the public wants today, you would not get very far.

This is why R&D has always been a long bet.

Over time fewer large corporations have decided to make this kind of long bet (you can even think of it a long trading position) and more R&D has moved to public institutions like universities and government labs.

Government is just plain terrible at most of the things it does, but when it pours a ton of $ on R&D there are results.

It may not be the most efficient use use of $. I am certain startups quickly iterating over business plans can do A LOT more with a lot less. But I am also equally certain there are a lot of high tech things which require far more $ over farm more time then startups usually have.

But then again how much $ constitutes a startup is changing.

The recent Y combinator deal where you simply throw $150K at everybody is fascinating. This could be a way for Y combinator to fund biotech startups.