Amazing you had to point this out. Some people are so used to thinking of the stock market as a gambling platform that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity.
That said, I’ve worked in consumer trading, and almost all of the profit margin comes from customers engaging in gambling-like behavior (e.g. crypto and options day trading). It’s a big reason I don’t work in that space any more.
>that we forget it serves an actual purpose, and is probably one of the primary drivers of our society’s prosperity.
We chose to give our fate of "prosperity" to monopoly money and we wonder why people became lonelier, more depressed, and hopeless in life.
When services cease to serve society and instead this speculation for people well off enough to participate, it should be no surprise Goodheart's law is minmaxed towards enshittification over quality. Shittier but higher engagement algorithms, price hikes on a whim, ads everywhere on your screen real estate, paywalls for essential news. And subscriptions for things that have no business being a subscription. So many subscriptions. I could go on all day.
And ofc the final optimization of this phenomenon is reducing costs on the mode expensive part of a business: labor. Automate it away or become a US shell company when 95+% operates in a 3rd world country paying well below US minimum wage. That's exactly what society needs, less reasons to get out of bed.
But if it made a few dozen billionaires even richer, I guess that's all that matters in the end.
I’ve traveled a bit and it’s pretty clear that the US has extremely high material prosperity. It’s not universally distributed but it is widely distributed. It’s not purely smoke and mirrors and creative accounting.
Certainly there are things that matter more in life than material prosperity, and there are many alienating things about western society.
Money spent transferring share(s) ownership doesn’t impact the companies cash flow unless it’s new shares emmision (eg if I buy issued coca cola shares, only the broker gets spendable cash).
Regarding gambling being a zero sum game, someone has to design, manufacture, service, install and operate the machines. Lots of employement building those machines. And taxes earned operating them. You do know that approx 5% of state revenues come from gaming activities.
Betting is _literally_ a zero-sum game that doesn't provide any economic benefits.