Some important things can be a source of income, such as farming. Farming is pretty important and there are no huge issues with farmers doing it for profit.
Problems happen when there is a huge disconnect between the value and reward. This happens in a basic research a lot, because researchers don’t have any direct customers.
Arguably, in a basic research, you principally can’t have any customers. Your customers are future researchers that will build on top of your research. They would be able to decide whether your work was valuable or whether it was crap, but you’d be pretty old or dead by that time.
Some important things can be a source of income, such as farming. Farming is pretty important and there are no huge issues with farmers doing it for profit.
Problems happen when there is a huge disconnect between the value and reward. This happens in a basic research a lot, because researchers don’t have any direct customers.
Arguably, in a basic research, you principally can’t have any customers. Your customers are future researchers that will build on top of your research. They would be able to decide whether your work was valuable or whether it was crap, but you’d be pretty old or dead by that time.