I fundamentally disagree with the concept of telling people what to do with their earned post-tax, post-obligation wealth.

You could make the same argument for any number of things, probably things you even do. Let's play with your sentence a bit:

"The thing I find most depressing about televisions is that the trillions of dollars collectively spend on hardware and programming would actually save millions of lives."

You can apply that to pretty much anything people do in first world countries that isn't available to people in the third world. Please get off your high horse and don't get bent out of shape when people do something that's in their own interest.