7 ms·

This all sounds so perverse to me. There are so many obviously brilliant people working on these things. Why aren't they doing something productive with their t

by rvense 6y ago

This all sounds so perverse to me. There are so many obviously brilliant people working on these things. Why aren't they doing something productive with their time? Fighting climate change, educating uneducated, feeding the unfed. All the energy and rare and bloody minerals that are being put into these radios, all the drinking water that will be forever tainted after having been used to produce the semiconductors needed for all this... was it really the best place to use it? To make the roulette wheel run a little faster? I don't understand it.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
You won't like it, but the there is a sensible answer for this. Despite you not liking the stock (and other financial) markets, they do perform a useful and needed task (price discovery, reallocation of resources, reallocation and focusing of human brainpower, reallocation of capital, allowing for investment (allocation of collected capital and resources in the present for future projects, so that they can be achieved faster, and thus provide overall better output of the system)), and even speculation is also an important part of that task. It is not needless greed (as popularized by some movies and pop culture), it is an engine of the capitalist civilisation, which has so far produced far more results (even in less obvious terms like allowing for least poverty in the world than any other time in history, because the benefits of a well-functiouning society do evidently trickle down to the the little guy, even if the most of it is collected at the top) than any other. There is indeed some meaningless speculation in it, just like how there is corruption in all of human systems, and just how in every ecosystem there are a number of parasites, but they are there because the underlying system (capitalism) is meaningful and produces value for society. > feeding the unfed They do feed the unfed. The capitalist system has been able to reduce world poverty by far far more than any other system in history. Look at the stats. And well-functioning capital, labor, idea and resource circulation markets are at the very heart of that system.
- rvense 6y ago
  > And well-functioning capital, labor, idea and resource circulation markets are at the very heart of that system. Sure. But I'd question whether high-frequency trading is a necessary component of that, as opposed to regular-frequency trading. Same as I'd question whether things like collateralized debt obligations and interest-free loans were good for the housing market. "Capitalist civilization" has changed in a number of ways since Reagan and Thatcher, just in its legal framework, compared to the thirty years before and I don't think it's obvious at all that we are better off in the developed world than we were in the fifties and sixties when things were more regulated. When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason.
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason. Have you ever picked up an economics textbook and read it?
  - icelancer 6y ago
    >> When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason. Have you considered its alternatives are not much better, if at all?
- jmnicolas 6y ago
  Your idealistic vision of the stock markets doesn't hold well to the reality of the Fed literally price fixing everything under the sun so that we don't experience the biggest crash since 1929. Right now there is no price discovery, all stocks are way overpriced. While mainstreet is going in flames, wallstreet acts like everything is peachy and jumps on any rumor of a hint of a possibility that someone somewhere might someday have something that look like the possibility of a COVID vaccine (looking at you Gilead scam). This won't end well (imo).
  - Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
    > This won't end well (imo). People have been saying that for decades. How many decades of successful operation are worth then having a couple of years of "won't end well"? Also why do we think that any other system would "end well" (whatever that specifically means)? It's not like there were never any economic crises or instability before FED and other organizations started manipulating the system that way.
    - jmnicolas 6y ago
      My company will probably default in September according to the boss. I'm French and I'm convinced that in less than 2 years from now I won't pay with Euros anymore (maybe Francs or South Euros or whatever they will invent). So at least for me it doesn't end well very soon. But even the FMI boss called for a big reset.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        Only comment I have is the in the US the Federal government imposes enormous and continual cash transfers from wealthy states to poorer state. I've come around to the idea that without those the system would fall apart. And that the EU does not appear to have anything at that scale. Also in the US banking is 100% backstopped by the Fed.
arnoooooo 6y ago
Apparently, because they get well paid and get huge budgets to have high tech fun. Unfortunately, most people don't reflect too deeply on the social consequences of their choice of employment.
logicchains 6y ago
> Why aren't they doing something productive with their time? Why is it any of your business how other people spend their time? There's no objective standard for morality. >To make the roulette wheel run a little faster? I don't understand it. Maybe try learning a bit about how markets work and the service they provide. Your criticism makes as much sense as somebody with no familiarity with the software industry complaining about encryption researchers wasting their time enabling child abuse.
- rvense 6y ago
  That's an interesting analogy, because I often find that the counterarguments sound a lot like techies arguing that encryption cannot have negative consequences.
saagarjha 6y ago
> There are so many obviously brilliant people working on these things. Why aren't they doing something productive with their time? You could say the same thing about pushing ads. The fact is that if there’s something that generates money, smart people will gravitate towards it if they can increase margins in a competitive field no matter how useless it might seem.
- rvense 6y ago
  This is a sort of determinism built in to capitalist morality: If money can be extracted from something, then it is always good and just to do so. Natural, in fact. (And to be extremely clear, I would say the same thing about pushing ads: just stop doing it. Walk away.)
rightbyte 6y ago
Yes it is perverse indeed. Imagine all the engineering being put into ads, tracking and hft instead of, I dont know, engine emission control or educational programs for kids. The incentives are all messed up. Hft could probably be "fixed" by some game rules. Like delaying any request by 10s+-some random delay. Then having an edge of some ms would just be noise.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >Imagine all the engineering being put into ads, tracking and hft instead of, I dont know, engine emission control or educational programs for kids. Not everybody cares about those things, in fact I'd wager the majority of people I know in HFT would be bored to tears at the thought of working on emission control or children's education programs. What gives you the right to decide how other people should spend their time?
  - rvense 6y ago
    This is a strange argument. You are arguing that HFT has a big effect on society (ie. the rest of us), but at the same time you are saying that society should not have a say in how or indeed if HFT is conducted?
    - logicchains 6y ago
      >You are arguing that HFT has a big effect on society (ie. the rest of us) Where am I arguing this?
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    I am not saying I would want to draft Goldman Sachs programmers into digging ditches. I have worked with ECU development and there are low hanging fruit to optimize for there if the effort, brainpower and money was put into it. I just wish that more effort was put into "low margin" classical industrial design than artificial top of the pyramids' algorithms, like banks and ads.
    - 6y ago

by rvense 6y ago

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago

You won't like it, but the there is a sensible answer for this. Despite you not liking the stock (and other financial) markets, they do perform a useful and needed task (price discovery, reallocation of resources, reallocation and focusing of human brainpower, reallocation of capital, allowing for investment (allocation of collected capital and resources in the present for future projects, so that they can be achieved faster, and thus provide overall better output of the system)), and even speculation is also an important part of that task. It is not needless greed (as popularized by some movies and pop culture), it is an engine of the capitalist civilisation, which has so far produced far more results (even in less obvious terms like allowing for least poverty in the world than any other time in history, because the benefits of a well-functiouning society do evidently trickle down to the the little guy, even if the most of it is collected at the top) than any other. There is indeed some meaningless speculation in it, just like how there is corruption in all of human systems, and just how in every ecosystem there are a number of parasites, but they are there because the underlying system (capitalism) is meaningful and produces value for society. > feeding the unfed They do feed the unfed. The capitalist system has been able to reduce world poverty by far far more than any other system in history. Look at the stats. And well-functioning capital, labor, idea and resource circulation markets are at the very heart of that system.

rvense 6y ago
> And well-functioning capital, labor, idea and resource circulation markets are at the very heart of that system. Sure. But I'd question whether high-frequency trading is a necessary component of that, as opposed to regular-frequency trading. Same as I'd question whether things like collateralized debt obligations and interest-free loans were good for the housing market. "Capitalist civilization" has changed in a number of ways since Reagan and Thatcher, just in its legal framework, compared to the thirty years before and I don't think it's obvious at all that we are better off in the developed world than we were in the fifties and sixties when things were more regulated. When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason.
- logicchains 6y ago
  >When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason. Have you ever picked up an economics textbook and read it?
- icelancer 6y ago
  >> When I look at stats for things like wage disparities, and the amount of money poured into marketing (demand generation), and the amount of frivolous products that the capitalist economy produces because it must by its nature constantly expand production, I quite honestly don't see efficiency and I certainly don't see reason. Have you considered its alternatives are not much better, if at all?
jmnicolas 6y ago
Your idealistic vision of the stock markets doesn't hold well to the reality of the Fed literally price fixing everything under the sun so that we don't experience the biggest crash since 1929. Right now there is no price discovery, all stocks are way overpriced. While mainstreet is going in flames, wallstreet acts like everything is peachy and jumps on any rumor of a hint of a possibility that someone somewhere might someday have something that look like the possibility of a COVID vaccine (looking at you Gilead scam). This won't end well (imo).
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  > This won't end well (imo). People have been saying that for decades. How many decades of successful operation are worth then having a couple of years of "won't end well"? Also why do we think that any other system would "end well" (whatever that specifically means)? It's not like there were never any economic crises or instability before FED and other organizations started manipulating the system that way.
  - jmnicolas 6y ago
    My company will probably default in September according to the boss. I'm French and I'm convinced that in less than 2 years from now I won't pay with Euros anymore (maybe Francs or South Euros or whatever they will invent). So at least for me it doesn't end well very soon. But even the FMI boss called for a big reset.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      Only comment I have is the in the US the Federal government imposes enormous and continual cash transfers from wealthy states to poorer state. I've come around to the idea that without those the system would fall apart. And that the EU does not appear to have anything at that scale. Also in the US banking is 100% backstopped by the Fed.

arnoooooo 6y ago

Apparently, because they get well paid and get huge budgets to have high tech fun. Unfortunately, most people don't reflect too deeply on the social consequences of their choice of employment.

logicchains 6y ago

> Why aren't they doing something productive with their time? Why is it any of your business how other people spend their time? There's no objective standard for morality. >To make the roulette wheel run a little faster? I don't understand it. Maybe try learning a bit about how markets work and the service they provide. Your criticism makes as much sense as somebody with no familiarity with the software industry complaining about encryption researchers wasting their time enabling child abuse.

rvense 6y ago
That's an interesting analogy, because I often find that the counterarguments sound a lot like techies arguing that encryption cannot have negative consequences.

saagarjha 6y ago

> There are so many obviously brilliant people working on these things. Why aren't they doing something productive with their time? You could say the same thing about pushing ads. The fact is that if there’s something that generates money, smart people will gravitate towards it if they can increase margins in a competitive field no matter how useless it might seem.

rvense 6y ago
This is a sort of determinism built in to capitalist morality: If money can be extracted from something, then it is always good and just to do so. Natural, in fact. (And to be extremely clear, I would say the same thing about pushing ads: just stop doing it. Walk away.)

rightbyte 6y ago

Yes it is perverse indeed. Imagine all the engineering being put into ads, tracking and hft instead of, I dont know, engine emission control or educational programs for kids. The incentives are all messed up. Hft could probably be "fixed" by some game rules. Like delaying any request by 10s+-some random delay. Then having an edge of some ms would just be noise.

logicchains 6y ago
>Imagine all the engineering being put into ads, tracking and hft instead of, I dont know, engine emission control or educational programs for kids. Not everybody cares about those things, in fact I'd wager the majority of people I know in HFT would be bored to tears at the thought of working on emission control or children's education programs. What gives you the right to decide how other people should spend their time?
- rvense 6y ago
  This is a strange argument. You are arguing that HFT has a big effect on society (ie. the rest of us), but at the same time you are saying that society should not have a say in how or indeed if HFT is conducted?
  - logicchains 6y ago
    >You are arguing that HFT has a big effect on society (ie. the rest of us) Where am I arguing this?
- rightbyte 6y ago
  I am not saying I would want to draft Goldman Sachs programmers into digging ditches. I have worked with ECU development and there are low hanging fruit to optimize for there if the effort, brainpower and money was put into it. I just wish that more effort was put into "low margin" classical industrial design than artificial top of the pyramids' algorithms, like banks and ads.
  - 6y ago