> Making the finance industry smaller would not help society, because it would make lending more expensive I may be uninformed, but this does not seem logical

> Making the finance industry smaller would not help society, because it would make lending more expensive I may be uninformed, but this does not seem logical to me. I'd say that 1) a smaller finance industry has lower costs, which should more than offset other effects and 2) cheap lending is part of the problem itself, because this cheap money is used (by the finance industry itself and wealthy people) to buy things that are already there (such as real estate, or businesses), inflating its price, after which they will extract more rent from it, as it is now increased in value. This is much easier and less risky than investing money in new economic activities. I understand that only a small percentage of lending actually goes into new economic activities, the vast majority is used to transfer ownership of pre-existing things, increasing the costs for society.