A thousand times this. Markets automatically value knowledge and discoveries at nothing because you typically have to possess knowledge (sometimes for 100 years) before you can estimate its value. If the development of a new industry goes through stages "A B C D ... X Y Z," where A-M are academic discoveries, the market awards 100% of the profit to N-Z and maybe a percent or two to M if they got lucky with patents, even though A-M required significant capital expenditure to carry out.

Everything we care about has been touched by uncompensated academics in some way (uncompensated = rewarded with <1% of the produced value for the purposes of argument). Much of the Nitrogen in your body comes from the Haber process. The air you breathe has benefited from emission reduction chemistry figured out by academics. The basis for the chemistry that produced the plastics around you was all figured out by academics (albeit tested, refined, and implemented by better paid engineers). Academic physicists made semiconductor models that formed the basis of simulations that made the industry practical. If you're not on Windows, academics wrote a healthy chunk of the OS on your computer. Physicists figured out the details of nuclear energy (in the US, 20% of the energy you are using right now) and built models that are used to a significant degree in the engineering of all of the others. Scientists are going to be responsible for pulling our collective asses out of the fire wrt global warming. The more I write the more I realize (and hopefully you realize) just how silly this train of thought is. As for mathematics, where would engineers be without linear algebra or calculus? How much less efficient would industry be without linear programming (programming = schedule making in this context)? It's impossible to even formulate these thoughts correctly because everything is interrelated.

I challenge you (great?-grandparent libertarian) to find an industry that does not inextricably depend upon some kind of model or fact produced by uncompensated academics (as defined above -- use any threshold for value capture you deem appropriate).

Whatever the market rewards people for, it is not value creation. It is value creation multiplied by a long list of factors which often go to 0 for arbitrary reasons (your customers are too poor, your product is not excludable, etc.)

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Fortunately, people are not rational actors wrt accumulating money. Here's what future career paths very roughly look like for new grads (based on my own perceptions, not glassdoor):

Helping the poor: $0 (maybe $12k if you count a fellowship)

Trying to Cure Cancer: $25k/yr, bump to $40k after 6 years

Engineering Medical Devices, Airplanes, etc: $60k/yr

Trying to Build the Next Twitter: $100k/yr-$150k/yr

Helping Rich People Game the System to Get Richer: $150k/yr, $300k/yr after a few years if successful

What disturbs me is that if I were to prioritize this list based on benefit to humanity, it would take the exact opposite ordering. There was <1% chance of that happening randomly.

What is a fan? Someone who gave your music a thumbs up? Or something willing to pay for the music you produced because they desire it so much? I have a feeling if you have hundreds of thousands of the latter you'd be in good shape.

Because that is the premise in pdog's comment which you were refuting as misguided.

You are free to do whatever you want (and not what other people desire) if you are self sufficient enough to not need anything from others (highly unlikely).

That is simply because no one desires an inexperienced pilot (ATP requires 1500 hours). I went to Embry Riddle and many of my friends are pilots. I understand how rough it is.