Mother capitalism deems that our brightest young minds best serve humanity in two tasks. Keeping the public passively scrolling, and moving money at speed to make wealthy people more wealthy.
Actually, not. These market makers are often prop shops. That means they use their own fund (prop = proprietary) to do the trading. They can do that because they don't need much capital to run.
So the story here is that over the last twenty years they stole the lunch from the traditional market makers like eg banks.
Of course, they got rich in the process. But they started from relatively modest means, compared to the companies they took on.
Michael Lewis's 'Flash Boys' is an hilarious account of this process. Well, it's involuntarily hilarious, because to tell his story, Lewis needs to cast Goldman Sachs (!) and other big banks as the victim. See the rebuttal 'Flash Boys: Not so fast' by Peter Kovac for more insight.
Perhaps some start this way. But in terms of the general trend of talented engineers and mathematicians being sucked into this quant vortex, it is a matter of making wealthy people wealthier.
Automation in trading makes all investors wealthier via lower fees. Trading costs basically nothing nowadays, and that is because far fewer people are employed to do it.
Obviously, the people who own the automation will want a cut of the rewards, like any other business.
Obviously NASDAQ and electronic trading systems are a good innovation. But firms basically doing arbitrage or exploiting uneven network latency are not that economically productive.
Well lowering market spreads is all about increasing the returns for capital, and incenctivising overfinancialisation. It's hardly curing cancer is it?
At worst it's actively harmful if you believe that the current state of turbo-financialised capitalism has its drawbacks.
> Network latency
Not really sure what you're talking about but surely spending billions of dollars to bring rtt latencies to 50 micros or whatever is not really a great use of money and top engineering talent. Again, it's playing an arbitrage game but not really delivering any value.
Some fraction of young minds, not all. I was happy to work at a small aerospace company with extreme concentration of brightest minds. Only because they loved the domain, and didn't mind a salary cut. What a joy and relief it was for me after FAANG!
No, I eventually left because money, I needed to save for a house.
Most of the staff were locals, so already had own/inherited property to live in. After FAANG it was new to work with mostly locals, way more stories about the surroundings.
Absolutely. The moral aspect is certainly questionable. Although, I wouldn't say "all brightest minds" are going to neglect their moral concerns for getting rich
To be honest, even this is morally questionable. It makes superficial sense in that someone else will do the work if you don't. But this happening on a large scale is still a drain on talent that could hopefully be used for work of greater social value.
Is the problem with the system or with the minds? The minds that want to scroll are the same as the ones that make money on the scrolling, that made the scrolling itself, and that made the system we're in. Why is it that defeatist comments always focus on the capitalism part and not on anything else? I don't think it's perfect like we aren't perfect but unless you have some particular suggestion this type of comment just reads "boohoo the world is bad and it's not my fault".
> Why is it that defeatist comments always focus on the capitalism part and not on anything else
Because endless growth is the only reason these once fun spaces have been hyper focused to be as addictive and stressful as possible to the "whales" of scrolling. That's why, when their own internal reports say "people spend unhealthy time on our platform and it's making them unhappy," it gets passed up the chain of command and whittled down by internal incentives until it dies as an issue.
Individuals hold some blame, but to put most of it on them is to ignore what growth demands. You're supposed to doomscroll and engage and worry. That's the business model. Facebook is in the same business as Cigarettes and Casinos. When I see someone on an air tank playing slots, literally crying when they spend their last dollar, I will not waste my breath blaming them. Just like I won't blame the doomscroller, anxious that they need to stay "informed," who hasn't met the basic needs in their own life.
> The minds that want to scroll are the same as the ones that make money on the scrolling
No? Where are you getting this? I don't think the people guiding these companies want to spend 6 hours scrolling TikTok. This is not the way most people live their lives.
> No? Where are you getting this? I don't think the people guiding these companies want to spend 6 hours scrolling TikTok. This is not the way most people live their lives.
I meant they are all humans. We're all sort of the same. If you disagree just think of your opinion of any other species, or about a group of people a thousand years ago, and you see what I meant.
So the story here is that over the last twenty years they stole the lunch from the traditional market makers like eg banks.
Of course, they got rich in the process. But they started from relatively modest means, compared to the companies they took on.
Michael Lewis's 'Flash Boys' is an hilarious account of this process. Well, it's involuntarily hilarious, because to tell his story, Lewis needs to cast Goldman Sachs (!) and other big banks as the victim. See the rebuttal 'Flash Boys: Not so fast' by Peter Kovac for more insight.