I think you are forgetting that the rightful allocation of capital is incredibly important to the functioning of society. It rewards entrepreneurs who are creating value with additional capital, and removes it from those that are destroying value. There are some obvious problems with the way wealth is currently managed (hedge funds generally have monthly or quarterly withdrawals, so the allocation of capital is a bit slower), but in general investors as a whole certainly do not &quot;scrap value&quot; from society without producing anything in return.