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I'm not gonna argue that financiers are curing cancer, but it sure does bother me that so many intelligent people who understand nothing about the industry have
by pgwhalen 10y ago
I'm not gonna argue that financiers are curing cancer, but it sure does bother me that so many intelligent people who understand nothing about the industry have just grown to assume that it provides no value to society.
- chii 10y agoI don't think they don't provide value - just that the value provided isn't commensurate with their payment. It's as if they extract every bit of surplus value they create, which means they produce no net value to society. It's as if they are an "employee" of Society Inc., but is paid exactly what they produced.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoI actually think it's a net negative, in the current US. Now there are good things that capitalism and markets do, but the way it's currently functioning no longer provides those benefits, because algorithmic trading has driven the signal to noise ratio in to bedrock. Wall St at this point is basically just a social noise amplifier stuck in an ugly feedback dynamic with the rest of the country. We long ago stopped hearing music from the underlying economy, we're on to mic static screaming at full volume. If I could wave my magic wand, Id switch to a single exchange which resolves all outstanding bids/orders once every 10 seconds in a single transaction. (You could create a single virtual exchange out of many actual ones using smart contracts.) I just don't believe Wall St would stop generating any real value by being forced to slow down and take a breath (and allow humans to act on relevant time scales). Instead, we have a noise amplification arms race.