I think the comment was a roundabout way of saying this is a clear market failure. There are more societally important things these people could be doing instead of shaving another ms off a transaction or finding minuscule option pricing inefficiencies. That the market is not correctly remunerating those options is the failure.
> For example, the tariff tantrums caused by trump proposing 100%+ china tariffs where he crashed the markets last spring, leading to a moderation in policy.
"Akshually traders are good bcuz they crash the market when the president does insane things" is not the own you think it is.
this undervalues how financial engineering allows more ideas and companies to be funded
compound interest is a rare exponential force, and it is available to most citizens of a developed country through the stock market
financial futures remain important for farmers to have predictable pricing, and increase crop yields
science is limited by funding at least as much as it is limited by ideas or intelligence
I understand why finance is a popular bogeyman, but the world is rarely black and white