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Notes -
Devil's advocate: people being able to buy the best gear also advances the sport. Competitive shooting does this all the time in its Open divisions, where you can run basically anything you want; if you've discovered a kind of setup that gives you a leg up over the other shooters then it's perfectly valid to use it (and if it came out of your garage you'll probably have people wanting to commercialize it).
Of course, not all divisions are Open (so if you don't have 5000 dollars to spend on the best gear, you can still be competitive with everyone else), and you still need to actually make the shots so if you're bad you'll get beaten by people in lower divisions much less your own... but having a division where you can just push the envelope however you like advances the sport.
I agree!
Spending money on the sport also supports events, a lot of pros in minor sports support themselves coaching or training amateurs.
I'm just saying that buying the appearance of competitive talent is a super-normal thing that rich guys do all the time.
Even things like travel, highbrow art consumption, wine collecting, often resemble trying to spend a lot of money to appear interesting.
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