From the three Fs? From a customer who wanted some playground equipment? From a crowdfunded philanthropic project that wanted to build some playgrounds? By saving up their income from previous jobs before making a go of a new company?
Basically, from the same places that the manufacturer gets their money from in order to pay dividends to the investors.
Investment banking is _a_ lubricant of industry, not _the_ lubricant, certainly not the fuel.
Wow. How much do you know about business and how long have you been around business?
Do you think that crowdfunding has replaced needing to raise capital through the legacy process of initial public offerings and also that companies that use investment bankers to not seek out a merger or acquisition of another company don't serve a purpose?
What do you think you just need millions to expand and walk into the bank or go to kickstarter?
Aren't investment bankers the ones providing money when one needs to build a new shipyard, oil rig or a power plant? It's definitely out of range of "Three Fs" or Kickstarter.
I believe "creating anything useful" in this context means "doing any useful task"; I don't believe the original poster intended to put nurses, cops, or any service job in the same group as investment banker and domain squatter.
In that sense, investment banker is still a useful and necessary job, unlike domain squatter.
So in your opinion is a domain squatter worse, the same, or better than a real estate investor? That is someone who identifies something that has value that might be able to be sold at a higher value at a later date and buys it for less than they intend to sell at that later date?
IMO domain squatters are worse (and definitely more annoying). While real estate investing still seems like a parasitic activity and I'd be happy for it to disappear, at least when it comes to houses, a buyer usually doesn't care about a particular building - one can equally well live in a house next door, or next street. Whereas domains are almost never interchangable; if someone squats on my-company-name.com (and similar forms), I won't settle for company-my-name-friendshipismagic.com; I am pretty much forced to either buy from them or change the company/product name.
Creating nothing useful is in the definition of "Investment Banker".