> A bunch of people wasting years of their life, not to mention all the resources, is a tragedy worth avoiding.

Is it? We live in a world in which social safety nets are eroding; an economically-divided one in which the middle class is rapidly disappearing.

These things (e.g. bullshit projects/jobs) are a form of "white collar welfare", no?

That's not bad. It's not like we're actually going to fix the underlying problem.

Perhaps another bored patent clerk will use his downtime to change the world.