You realize your argument is a strawman, right?
Essentially, excess profits can only go into one a a few places:
- retained earnings (cash in the company's bank account)
- reinvest in the company (either capex or opex)
- paid out as dividends (giving cash to shareholders)
- buy back shares (again, giving cash to shareholders, but in a different form)
- pay off debt (giving cash back to bondholders)
- spend more on labor (hire more workers, or pay workers more)
Realistically, there is nothing in this list that can increase or decrease "usefulness" without another variable. Poorly run companies don't reinvest in the right things (or at the right times). Poorly run companies buy back shares when they are expensive, or pay out dividends when they should be building the balance sheet or reinvesting into the company. And paying workers more only makes sense if it increases output (maybe happy workers make better shopping websites).
To use one wealthy person as an example, Jeff Bezos' billions are somewhat illusory. They give him control of the firm (which, is probably better served in his hands than yours or mine). He can't spend those shares. He can sell them for cash, or give them away to charity, but he cannot spend them in current form. He has chosen to invest them in charities, and more obviously, Blue Origin. But really, he first reinvested potential earnings back into Amazon, at a time when almost everyone thought he was stupid. His investing took awhile, but it created the largest, most capable retail firm in history. So the results of his "investing" seem to have been pretty impressive. I'm not sure about you, but I din't have the kind of foresight to make the decision (otherwise I would have owned Amazon stock back then!) And personally, I like the idea of being able to buy a TV without having to hop into a car and be stuck in traffic for 20 minutes or more. SO the benefit to me is I saved at least 20 minutes when I bought a TV.
You don't have to like this - nobody needs to "like" this. But picking on wealthy people because they've made money is definitely not a productive use of anyone's output.