The problem with this line is that there is social value to things aside from their standalone ability to generate revenue. Essentially every publicly funded thing derives from this philosophy. In fact the social utility of a thing and its profitability probably aren’t that tightly coupled.

If you buy that (not everyone does) then it follows that an industry can be compensating beyond its social value.

That is, the value of providing market liquidity is not zero. The value of figuring out the optimal next video on YouTube is not zero. But in my opinion there is also social value in making sure poor kids can read.

it seems to me that the problem is quite the opposite. people believe that the "importance of allocation of capital" (good euphemism by the way) is WAY more important that it really is. do we need extra personalized ads in each of our machines? do we need instant financial trades and people optimizing instant transactions? We don't need a sophisticated AI to "inform" the customers.

there is a ton of things that are there simply because at some point people made money out of it, and then lobbied politicians to death to avoid regulation.