You're talking about academia, society's attempt to gain economic utility from science. You assume, I didn't know about it based on what?

Exploiting science for economic utility alone misses the incurred second order effects, as I posited above. You completely ignore that crucial part, despite of it being the whole (very much practical) point here.

Still there's something to the notion of people who prefer Academia to Industry. As much as I tend to agree with your broader points that it's a game and people love the prestige game and they now can pull levers to accelerate their winning in that Prestige game.. still they chose a path that is less about money and more about ideals than industry. It may be less and less ideal driven and less and less of a cloistered monastery but it's still a place for people who chose against industry. I say that as an industry guy who can just feel when I speak to academics that they are driven by something different than those of us industry. And to be clear those resident industry are not only driven by money we're also driven by building and changing the world but it's still different

A practical person would be off doing something else. You have an axe to grind.