&gt; Clearly they are making something of value in someone&#x27;s eyes.<p>Most of what a successful hedge fund does is <i>moving</i> wealth rather than <i>creating</i> it. The people it&#x27;s moved to will no doubt be very happy to pay for that service, but that doesn&#x27;t mean any value is actually being created.<p>Imagine a world where money literally rains down from the sky. Anyone can pick it up and use it to buy things.<p>But some enterprising people think &quot;Hmm, I bet I can get a larger share of this money&quot;. Some of them put up big poles and attach enormous nets to them, collecting money that would otherwise have fallen in other people&#x27;s gardens. Some buy planes that fly around catching money before it has a chance to land. Some find ways to generate strong winds that blow the money to where they can collect it.<p>Much competition ensues. Higher, wider nets! Faster planes with broader-area money-collecting apparatus! Stronger winds!<p>After a while, most of the money falling from the sky ends up in the pockets of a few organizations that can afford (and have the skill to develop) the most effective money-collecting machinery (nets, planes, wind generators) and have managed to negotiate legal rights to collect money falling in areas they wouldn&#x27;t otherwise have had access to.<p>They very kindly sell their money-collecting services (this is how they fund the development of better and better money-collecting machinery) and, indeed, they provide good value for money: you can often pay them $1M and get back $2M. They are, that is, providing a service that is valuable to their customers.<p>But they are not increasing the amount of money falling from the sky. All they&#x27;re doing is catching it more effectively than anyone else is able to. They do very slightly increase the total amount of money being collected, because their machines can get at a few otherwise inaccessible places, but mostly all they do is redirect to themselves (and their customers) money that would otherwise have ended up in someone else&#x27;s hands.<p>A successful hedge fund is a little like one of these money-collecting organizations. It has developed effective ways of making money flow into their pockets rather than others&#x27;, it provides that service to its investors at a price they are happy to pay, it may create a <i>very little</i> value by increasing market efficiency a bit, but mostly it&#x27;s playing a zero-sum game.<p>&gt; Why does everything have to be objectively useful and beneficial to the whole of society?<p>Clearly it doesn&#x27;t. After all, we have all these hedge funds, and the people running them and working for them are <i>very nicely</i> compensated for it.<p>&gt; the simple question of &#x27;is something willing to pay for it with their own money&#x27;<p>If you make that your <i>only</i> question then you end up approving of theft and assassination, both of which are things people are willing to pay for with their own money. Unless you&#x27;re happy with that, you need <i>some</i> other principles.