[crossbody]

How much bending is actually happening vs just hypotheticals thought? Elon Musk donated a lot and then suddenly Big Beautiful Bill hit Tesla very hard. Doesn't sound like he got a favor paid back. Also, not that we should emulate Russia (not at all) but since 2000s there any oligarch trying to do anything political goes to jail or "falls out of their window". So possible in principle to remove the influence (I don't approve of the method though).

Sure, HTF is zero sum. I just think that focus on it is excessive. 99.9% of businesses are not. Regret would be nice to include in consideration but I doubt one can reliably measure it in practice

[srean]

Not just HFT, options market, futures market are all zero sum. They are massive.

[crossbody]

How massive relative to everything else in the economy that is not zero sum? 1%?

Also, disagree on options and futures market. They do provide important economoc function of price discovery and insurance against risk

[srean]

Much bigger than non-derivative stock market for sure.

"The derivatives market is, in a word, gigantic—often estimated at over $1 quadrillion". The stock market would be puny in comparison. This is quite well known so was quite surprised by your objection.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/052715/how-big-deri...

The derivatives market is much larger than the stock market, both in sheer trading volume and total face value. While global stock markets represent a total value of roughly \(\$120\) trillion, the estimated notional value of the global derivatives market easily exceeds \(\$500\) trillion to \(\$1\) quadrillion.

https://share.google/aimode/EAEGnOouA5dvj9leC

Derivative markets are necessary for price discovery but when they tower over in volume over the market whose prices it was supposed to discover it is serving a purpose that towers over its justified/motivating purpose.

[saulapremium]

Elon Musk donated a lot of money and among many other things, his companies avoided investigations. The fact that neither Trump or Putin have any loyalty doesn't negate the fact that money buys you tremendous power.

[crossbody]

It doesn't negate the influence gain, however the Putin and Trump examples show that this influence is often (very) limited and short lived, not "tremendous"

[saulapremium]

Elon Musk, by his own words, would be in prison if the Democrats had won. It seems to me that he got exactly what he wanted.