Finance is the institution which puts society’s idle capital to work. That traders can earn an income keeping prices in line with value is an externality of an incredibly useful system https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1327588411562225666

Forget about “keeping markets efficient” or other such apologia. The point is that the existence of hedge funds that just trade in the secondary market is a consequence of those markets existing, which is what makes societies wealthy in the first place

With all respect to PG here, he sounds like the fish asking what water is. Functional securities markets are a precondition for traders to make a living. The existence of traders suggests that something has gone very right.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that there exists a threshold of financialization and securitisation which is suboptimal, which is undoubtedly where we are. But I will defend the concept of finance all day, and I’ll bite the bullet around HFs being free riders