What about funding basic research at universities or X-Prizes, for example?

https://www.xprize.org/

Often when we advance scientific or engineering knowledge, society benefits in many ways.

Which ones did you work for? I think we'd be better off knowing which ones were outright scams so we can avoid them.

Do you think this is unilaterally true?

When you mix political power (depending of your positions, you might meet presidents, diplomats, terrorists or people that could barely survive for one more day) and money, you create a field full of frauds, favors, harassments and so on. I feel sorry for my ex-colleagues being exploited and in burnout as what they idealized was totally different than reality.