[mistermann]

Their profits have to come from somewhere, and a lot of those profits come from their trading activity in the markets, and for them to extract money from that, then the other participants in that market (myself, and "society") have to be losing it.

[MrMan]

Do you think it might be possible that moving that money between market participants is actually a good thing? Let's say someone decides to put 10% of their fortune into a hedge fund and the fund goes to zero. Is that worse than just giving 10% of your money to the church? The children of the limo drivers, pilots, fund administrators, sales desk people, all deserve to eat (in my opinion).

This is not a frivolous reply.