Wait, how do you know it won't contribute economic value?
Maybe it doesn't do so today, but it may very well do so tomorrow. New projects need investment. When somebody spends their time on pursuing an endeavour that they think will have economical impact, then I don't see any issue with supporting them by at least not letting them sleep on the street and suffer from not having access to proper health care.
There seem to be plenty of open-source projects that are used by many people, but aren't rewarded in a way proportional to that. So one could also argue the other way around: Why should society allow for companies making money off people who then are supposed to get financial support from all of us?
Maybe it doesn't do so today, but it may very well do so tomorrow. New projects need investment. When somebody spends their time on pursuing an endeavour that they think will have economical impact, then I don't see any issue with supporting them by at least not letting them sleep on the street and suffer from not having access to proper health care.
There seem to be plenty of open-source projects that are used by many people, but aren't rewarded in a way proportional to that. So one could also argue the other way around: Why should society allow for companies making money off people who then are supposed to get financial support from all of us?