[grinnbearit]

Finance isn't evil; day trading, investment banking, venture capital are all sharing information with the world and trying to move money to places where its more valuable.

There is a case to be made about "negative externalities"[1] but talking about the whole of finance as unnecessary is throwing out the baby with the bath water.

[1] costs that aren't borne by the producer

[wott]

Valuable for what?

[grinnbearit]

Valuable for satisfying human desires

The theory is that people spend money on what they desire, and so companies that generate more money satisfy more human values.

You will always find outliers and exceptions (caused by negative externalities usually), but this is true in general.