Because govt normally does poor job in aligning incentive and effort for efficiency. Amazon will try to be most efficient because they are getting back all the profit out of it.
Govt should make sure labour, monopoly laws and taxes are aligned with society's expectations.
I might doubt your doubt somewhat. As often with Gene Wolfe, it's not clear to me that it is his powers which have waned, or that it is my own folly in not rising to the challenge of the puzzle. There's so very often something lurking in the shadows after all, and (in my incomplete experience) his works always benefit from a re-read.
For one more recent work with more workaday prose, The Sorcerer's House, it helps to follow a 'superfan' and consider it a rewriting of the lamia of Corinth. There certainly is so much more there than meets the eye; as dense as BoTNS. I find it more fruitful to take the ostensible lack of clues to figure out the 'real' deal as challenge for us (or the braver readers of the future) to rise up to.
There's plenty good in late Wolfe, just deeper hidden, perhaps.
When I was working at a quant hedge fund which was adding very little to actual efficient allocation of capital in the world I came across many an accomplished researcher who wanted switch from academia largely because it was just that much more lucrative. One person for example was coding the creation of better medical lenses at a top university and had been subsidised by state prizes to the tune of hundreds of thousands. Certainly felt like a waste of talent as they switched tack to add the a tiniest fraction of liquidity.
Liquidity is important, but efficiency is more important. When we identify fraudulent companies, for example. The sooner the better, right?
Or, when we identify the next Google, and give them the resources (money) they need to build a new world-changing product. The sooner the better, right?
Lots of people found charities or start businesses once they've created a wealth base. If this person makes millions in finance, he/she just might found a lab or create a medical lense startup in the future. It might eventually be more effective than begging for government grants.
Perhaps, though that starts a long line of big ifs, and the wealth to solve a great deal of the world's problems already exists - a vast chunk of it just spins in various shadowy games.
I tend to think there are better ways for bettering society than philanthropy though, and these vary wildly in effectiveness. In this case the millionaires in this fund focused primarily on some cancer charities. I understand that these tend to resonate emotionally since everyone is at risk, but really they are quite suboptimal ways of channeling funding relative to the needs of the world or maximising ethical return on investment.
