Real good

Surely there is a way to do real good and be compensated for it monetarily, right? If I'm presented with a path to riches which doesn't involve doing much good for anybody, is the money worth it? Is the money worth it if I use it to support a more helpful, less profitable project perhaps?

It's beginning to look like "good money for good product" is old-fashioned idealism. Many of the most helpful things (to me, at least) on the Internet are free, like Wikipedia and Google searches. If I was to create something with that level of usefulness, how would I pay my mortgage and fix the Gremlin?

Money. Bah.