I think there is a place for some friendly competition and even a bit of duplication. After repeatability is a cornerstone of empirical science. But the sheer waste of money that goes into what are essentially games of personal one upmanship I suspect is huge.

The other problem is that it is very difficult for younger people or people without an august sponsor to get ahead. Collaboration is generally seen as a weakness (i.e. its not all your own work) and competing with the top people in any given field is a very high risk strategy (which nonetheless nearly every new academic takes as far as they are able to). So people are wasted as well which in a sense is even worse than the money.