[wpietri]

Your first point isn't a fallacy to the argument. If they are good enough to to a job there, they're good enough to do a job elsewhere.

Your second point is trivially answered: you let the market decide where they work.

That's not obvious to you because you conflate "provide utility" with "make money". There are lots of things that make money that provide no utility. A large part of the history of business regulation is basically restricting those so people focus on providing utility rather than making money at things that provide zero or negative societal value.

The argument you respond to is basically suggesting that HFT is not generating any value for society. If you want to demonstrate that it's false, you have to show that HFT creates value in line with its costs.

[kasey_junk]

Fine, but why doesn't every new industry have to make this same argument?

It's pretty obvious to me that social networks have some pretty dangerous attributes (decrease in privacy & personal securty, etc) to them. Do these dangerous attributes outweigh the value that twitter provides? Who decides and why?

[erichocean]

Fine, but why doesn't every new industry have to make this same argument?

Because most new industries aren't within the financial industry, messing with the fundamental operation of markets. Those that are have to make that argument.

[wpietri]

I think every new industry does have to make this argument. And they have to make it to their industry regulators and to the people who employ them. That is we, the people.