I don't. I just questioned whether they actually do provide more value by trading or if it just appears that way during a financial bubble.

Don't forget that the sole purpose of trading is to finance making. Trading has no intrinsic value. It's the bureaucracy of capitalism ;-)

That sounds an awful lot like the greek philosophers who did not hold merchants in high regard.

Making is ultimatively just pushing atoms (or ideas), too.

I'm just making a difference between the goals and the means to achieve those goals. The goal is to produce the goods and services we want. Trading is a means to do that efficiently, similar to computing.

Computing, just as trading, has no intrinsic value. It has value only insofar as it achieves its goals. I doubt that trading has been achieving its goals in the most efficient and effective way possible recently.

In 2007 the financial industry in the US made 70% of all corporate profits. Obviously, something was out of balance and it's rebalancing now. Part of that rebalancing will no doubt be a shift of labor away from that bloated financial services sector.

I don't think this critique should be taken as offensive or disparaging at all.

Yes, I agree it was out of balance.

No offense taken.