To your first point, business is largely a zero sum game at any given time for business owners. I believe the number of entrepreneurs who can be supported by the economic ecosystem is already at its current carrying capacity, so giving more opportunity to the poor will not increase the total sum but rather just change the social background of those who go on to become entrepreneurs. This is not a bad thing, but it still leaves us with the same number of people succeeding and failing as we have now.

To the anecdotes you mention, there is only a finite amount of basic research which can be done at any given time. A finite number of avenues which can be pursued. At a certain point the work being done by scientists becomes redundant. From this perspective, throwing more researchers at a problem doesn't necessarily increase our productivity. Those whose work is valued enough by someone willing to pay - either Universities or businesses - will be the ones who get to pursue that work. Again, I believe that the active research being done now is sufficiently pursuing those promising lines of research which exist.

To your third point, humanity has advanced very much from our primitive existence in the distant past, in terms of the well being of the masses as well as our collective capabilities.

If you feel the existence of hierarchies is antithetical to progress, I would challenge you to find any complex system in which hierarchy of some sort does not exist. I believe that hierarchy is a fundamental characteristic of productive, complex systems.