It's a "long game": to cure cancer 10 years from now, we all need to work on ads now so we have the money to spend on energy/medical/whatever research. Most of

It's a "long game": to cure cancer 10 years from now, we all need to work on ads now so we have the money to spend on energy/medical/whatever research. Most of us who work on ads are not going to be funding (or working for) those research institutions (which are, alas, shrinking and dying). The successful ones are going to become executives at larger companies, or venture capitalists (few of whom will rise enough to make any calls regarding direction). The problem isn't that there's anything wrong with working on ads. There isn't. It's where the money is, and it's no worse than what most people do in their jobs. It's that anti-intellectualism, from below, and rapacious upper-class parasitism, from above, have deprived society of the research opportunities into which smart people should be able to direct their time. For the most part, the jobs just don't exist (look at academia).