[mousa]

There are jobs that are legitimately BS and everyone within the industry knows it but works hard at it anyways because it's their job.

In the investment world there are a lot that come to mind.

A large number of financial advisors' entire job is just sales: they get clients funneled to companies that do the stock picking. They know these companies will not beat the indexes but it's safe, accepted, absolves them somewhat of responsibility when things go south, and these companies give them all the talking points they need to deal with clients efficiently so they can collect more.

Those companies see their job as not being out of line with the stock market indexes. They have to be a little different to justify their existence but not different enough to risk being way short of the benchmark. It is impossible for them to beat the market with their levels of risk aversion + fees, and there is no real incentive to do so. Within these companies, a large majority of the effort therefore goes to marketing to financial advisors trying to get their clients' money.

That's putting aside the question of whether there is any societal value if these RIA's were even trying and succeeding at getting more returns for their clients.