All those resources (including, but not limited to: time, commitment, materials for the hardware, and energy) to mine bitcoins could also go to (including, but not limited to) F@H, WCG, POEM@home, DistrRTGen. All of them not giving "money" in return, but all of them more worthwile causes. And those do not "boost" trading in illegal goods.
I don't disagree that the others are good ways to invest compute power, but bitcoin has merit other than making profit. For example, bitcoin would eliminate the credit card and cash processing industry. The prices we pay at any store are already inflated by a few percent to pay the middle men who handle cash or credit cards. Bitcoin is a direct payment method with no middle man. Think of the amount of money that could be saved if the world adopted Bitcoin. If even a fraction of that money saved was devoted to research that those other pools perform, it would dwarf any computational investment that could be made by switching Bitcoin miners to those causes.
Also, don't forget that the early adopters of most technology are the usually ones that have have the most unscrupulous goods. For example, the porn industry usually embraces technology before the general public. Think of VHS, Blu-ray, the Internet, etc. Does this make the aforementioned items morally wrong? No, because the technologies evolve and are primarily used for better purposes now. Bitcoin is evolving the same way.
If your money is in a bank that gets robbed, the government will replace it for you for free. The US Dollar has Gold and other assets behind it that give it value. Bitcoin has, uh, magic trading cards? It is only worth what other people (you) agree it is worth.
That's assuming that whatever government insures the money. In the U.S. it's generally true, but then again that's only up to $250,000 and only if the bank is FDIC insured. That insurance costs money, and therefore you get lower interest rates because of it. Also, the U.S. dollar has had no gold backing since October 1976. It is only protected by the "full faith and credit of the U.S. government". If the U.S. government fails, however unlikely that is, well then good luck getting anything for your dollars.
I have been thinking off and on about jumping into a mining pool. But I just don't know???
That's never a bad idea if you already have a AMD graphics card, but I would highly suggest not buying hardware just to mine coins. ASIC miners which are 100x more energy efficient than graphics cards will be coming soon and they will make any purchased hardware obsolete before it repays its initial cost.