To be fair, options/futures are pretty simple and have uses that most people would count as legitimate. A farmer buying oil futures to mitigate the cost of a p

To be fair, options/futures are pretty simple and have uses that most people would count as legitimate. A farmer buying oil futures to mitigate the cost of a potential spike in fuel prices (and thus his costs) is basically just him buying insurance; trying to smooth out any crazy volatility his business may face is a fairly legitimate and straightforward application of finance. This is, of course, in contrast to a lot of financial instruments (particularly in the last couple of decades) that are needlessly complex (where at least some of the value for the issuer is in obfuscating the actual implications of the security from the buyer).