Like I definitely think it is better for society if the economic forces are incentivizing pursuit of knowledge more than pursuit of pure entertainment[0]. But I think we also need to be a bit careful here. You need some celebrities to be the embodiment of an idea but the distribution can be too sharp and undermine, what I think we both agree on is, the goal.

Yeah, I think, on average, a $100M researcher is generating more net good for a society (and world) than a $100M sports player or actor. Maybe not in every instance, but I feel pretty confident about this on average. But at the same time, do we get more with one $100M researcher or 100 $1M researchers? It's important to recognize that we're talking about such large sums of money that at any of these levels people would be living in extreme luxury. Even in SV the per capita income is <$150k/yr, while the median income is medium income is like half that. You'd be easily in the top 1%. (The top 10% for San Jose is $275k/yr)

I think we also need to be a bit careful in recognizing how motivation can misalign incentives and goals. Is the money encouraging more to do research and push humanity's knowledge forward? Or is the money now just another means for people that just want money to exploit, who have no interest in advancing humanity's knowledge? Obviously it is a lot more complicated and both are happening but I think it is worth recognizing that if things shift towards the latter than they actually make it harder to achieve the original goals.

So on paper, I'm 100% with you. But I'm not exactly sure the paper is matching reality.

[0] To be clear, I don't think entertainment has no value. It has a lot and it plays a critical role in society.