How to defend the idea of defunding academia?

Just went to Sabine Hossenfelder’s video about defunding academia. Oh boy, the comments really are against defunding academia.

They think that if academia were only funded by private cooperations, then academic progress would stop because the cooperations would be too greedy to share their new knowledge with others – while if it’s state funded, there is no need to disclose knowledge. Or another argument is that not everything which is “good” is also profitable, as scientists found a cure for lung cancer in Cuba, but this is not profitable so no one cared to fund their research. More profitable was creating a treatment for cancer which does not cure the cancer but just prolongs human life expectancy with cancer.

How can I argue against such kind of ideas and mindset? It all has this “what if a rich capitalist buys all the water and everyone will die” vibes