You can't wait for perfection. This is the classic Maslow's hierarchy of needs fallacy. If you wait until the "more fundamental" layers are perfect you will wait too long or wait forever. And in many cases you will miss out on opportunities which feedback to "lower" layers from higher ones. It's important to spend an appropriate amount on different sorts of activities, but the appropriate amount is never to spend nothing on "higher level" stuff.
Consider science, for example. A lot of money was effectively invested into very esoteric sciences in the 18th through 19th centuries while the world was generally very poor, struggling to feed itself, struggling with disease, and so on. The seemingly logical, and compassionate, thing to do in those eras would have been to ignore esoteric pursuits and concentrate on dumping as much time, effort, and money into making everyone's lives better.
But that would have been disastrous. It would have meant that science would have lacked an understanding of genetics, of micro-biology, of chemistry, of electromagnetism, of physics, and so on. And that would have stunted the development of the industrial age (steam engines, and later electric motors), it would have stunted the development of new food crops, of fertilizers, of sanitation systems, of vaccines, of radio/television/networking, etc. Without which the entire world would be essentially as poor as it was in the 18th century, instead of with billions of people having access to stable food supplies, clean water, etc. and over a billion people living in wealth with a few billion more on the way to that level of wealth in the next few decades.
Consider science, for example. A lot of money was effectively invested into very esoteric sciences in the 18th through 19th centuries while the world was generally very poor, struggling to feed itself, struggling with disease, and so on. The seemingly logical, and compassionate, thing to do in those eras would have been to ignore esoteric pursuits and concentrate on dumping as much time, effort, and money into making everyone's lives better.
But that would have been disastrous. It would have meant that science would have lacked an understanding of genetics, of micro-biology, of chemistry, of electromagnetism, of physics, and so on. And that would have stunted the development of the industrial age (steam engines, and later electric motors), it would have stunted the development of new food crops, of fertilizers, of sanitation systems, of vaccines, of radio/television/networking, etc. Without which the entire world would be essentially as poor as it was in the 18th century, instead of with billions of people having access to stable food supplies, clean water, etc. and over a billion people living in wealth with a few billion more on the way to that level of wealth in the next few decades.