> Just because something didn't work out doesn't mean it was a waste

Its all about scale.

If you spend $100 on something that didn't work out that money wasn't wasted if you learned something amazing. If you spend $1,000,000,000,000 on something that didn't work out the expectation is that you learn something close to 1,000,000,000x more than the $100 spend. If the value of learning is several orders of magnitude less than the level of investment there is absolutely tremendous waste.

For example: nobody qualifies spending a billion dollars on a failed project as value if your learning only resulted in avoiding future paper cuts.

It's not waste, it's a way to get rid of excess liquidity caused by massive money printing operations.