My simple point is there are many cases where money better serves society as charity (no return on investment) rather than as an investment. There are cases where the free market fails to solve societal problems - all those charity companies and problems like healthcare/education.
I'm tired of seeing the same trope of "the free market solves all problems" when there are clear counterexamples. Its clear as day to me that $1B spent on malaria is better than $1B spent on the next advertising startup. The ad company may have been a great investment and many employees would be recipients of the money like you say. Doesn't change the fact that there are better uses for the money - uses not served by the incentive structure of free markets.
Charity and the free market are not antiethical to each other. Charity is part of the free market.
Also, you're arguing that you know better how to spend money than others. Probably about 90% of people feel that way about it, too, and they all have different ideas than you.
I am talking specifically of incentives. Capitalism incentivizes creation of economic value and ideally societal good by rewarding it with money. This particular incentive structure does not reward things like charity because there is no money to be made. People do it for reasons outside of money, which is great but limited to a few since its not really incentivized by the system as a whole. So i would not say charity is part of the free market.. it is orthogonal to the market.
As for the central planning argument that a single planner cannot effectively organize all of society, I agree. But central planners (such as government) already do have some influence in the structure of the economic system, which behaviors are rewarded vs. not.
Don't you think there might be other ways of setting up the world that incentivize behaviors differently? Whatever way has worked so far might not be the best going forward when the problems we are solving at society scale change.
I'm tired of seeing the same trope of "the free market solves all problems" when there are clear counterexamples. Its clear as day to me that $1B spent on malaria is better than $1B spent on the next advertising startup. The ad company may have been a great investment and many employees would be recipients of the money like you say. Doesn't change the fact that there are better uses for the money - uses not served by the incentive structure of free markets.