What value do we create here?

First of all, I disagree with the entire premise of the question. Why does the intelligent have an obligation to dedicate his or her life to the creation of maximal value for society? Sounds like Nietzsche's slave morality to me. Why does the attractive/tall/healthy not have a similar special moral obligation?<p>Second of all, providing liquidity is very important. Sure, you are only shaving off a few basis points, but multiply that by a few trillion and you are creating serious value. How much value does a silly time-wasting video game provide relative to the efficient allocation of the world's capital?<p>Finance is an extremely exciting field, where machine learning, econometrics, physics, and just about everything else converge. Imagine a world without car insurance, where startups cannot offer equity, where there are no IPOs. Finance facilitates co-operation, trade, and, yes it is cliche, but world peace. If you are interested, please don't let the media and finger-pointing politicians turn you away from this exciting line of work.

Wow, I'm quite surprised and honored to come home and see that my post got so many votes.<p>Having read through most comments below, I want to make a few points:<p>1. I am not implying a moral obligation to do some jobs over others. Nor am I suggesting a framework to judge the value of some jobs over others. If I had known this was going to be read by so many people, I would have spent more time making sure my message was communicated more clearly. I'm sorry for giving some people the wrong idea.<p>2. My point is actually very simple and I expect the vast majority of Hacker News readers already get it: for people considering what jobs to do, especially young college students, be wary of focusing on the value of fun and money. Fun and money can be very distracting when you are young and haven't experienced so much freedom before. However, the decisions you make when you are young can have consequences for the trajectory of your whole life. Always think about what will give you long-term and enduring happiness and satisfaction. Often, I think long-term happiness is connected with a cause greater than your own immediate satisfaction. Hence the consideration of value creation.<p>It's obvious advice, but I hoped my story would make it more digestible for college students.

Not very well written. The point is unclear... I had to read xxzz's comment to really figure out what he meant (probably because to me as to xxzz, "increasing the liquidity of the secondary bonds market" doesn't sound like "worthless value" at all, so the main point of the article contradicts my sense of values).<p>I think the question "How do we add value?" is important, but only in the sense that it can help you figure out what are the key activities of the business, that you should be involved in. It can help focus you, basically.

The first two comments on the site provide a great insight into the question.<p>The first commenter posts to try and explain what value is being created.<p><i>Efficient markets -&#62; lower transaction costs -&#62; greater access to the markets by everyone. Why is that un-noble? Isn't Art.sy doing the same thing? </i><p>All true. Then Carter responds agreeing and writes a bit about what Art.sy is doing.<p><i>Art.sy is not saving the world, but our goal is to create a fundamental change in the way art is bought, sold, and appreciated. We envision a dramatically different future where artists can pursue their passions more sustainable, and where everyone else will be more inspired by original art.</i><p>The first commenter isn't wrong about why creating liquidity has value, he just hasn't gone far enough. So there's greater access to the markets by everyone. What good does that do? There are several more steps before getting eventually to the production of things that have real value.<p>Art.sy does the same thing, but hasn't lost sight of the end goal. The reason for providing a more efficient and liquid market is so that more artists can create more original art.

[Long time lurker. Please forgive me for length]<p>I think the most obvious creation of value comes from my view of how video games increase the value of technology. Video games tax the underlying hardware and software technology to its limits causing those underlying systems to shift towards greater utility under market pressure.<p>If value is seen by its utility, then I would say that it is inevitably the result of market pressure to have a better product. Where money is concerned, profit pushes improvement. This is just part of the underlying structure the economy.<p>If you are asking about social incentives, it is a personal one for the programmer. He feels fulfilled writing the program. Is it not the same self-fulfillment that his manager was seeking- the idea of meeting his ideal self's human potential? It may not be the same goal, but the main crux of the argument is in self-fulfillment.<p>But all of that is off-topic considering the headline.<p>If you are looking for an argument that would give merit that this job "creates value," I would say that it feeds the families of those who work at that company by making it more sustainably profitable.<p>I'd weasel my way out of answering the question directly. I would counter that you can ask the same thing about what value marketing gives. Sure the companies have useful products, but what does all that money spent on image branding and market testing product color and style pallets give? Hell, even the TV programming they place it against can be absolutely vapid and lacking in any moral or mental fortitude.<p>But back to my off-topic rant up above. When the general economy hires talent, we generally view that the use of such talent not only increases the talent pool by demand but also the training quality of future professionals by the increased use of such training facilities (universities, researchers, hardware, market). Relying on only measuring directly viewable metrics is a nice and dandy, but the big picture approach (although based on ideals and doesn't correlate 1 to 1 in reality) is a general notion that is hard to argue against.<p>tl;dr The more you use a resource the more it improves (towards efficiency). This includes talent.

He all but said he create the basis of yet another High Frequency Trading firm.<p>I had an interview with one in the past and while the models that they used were fascinating and I could get lost in them forever driven by pure mathematical interest - it seems unbalancing.<p>While HFT does provide liquidity and the ability to instantly make a market, it also makes companies and trades look more liquid than they are. More than half of the stock exchange's trades are made by high frequency traders.<p>There are ups and downs and each situation should be weighed individually.<p>Overall, I'd say the epiphany that the author had is sadly something that many people miss. We then turn around and we wonder why the world is such a bad and dangerous place.

Maybe not on-topic considering all the other comments, but by the time I was finished with the first paragraph I could only think how far that is from my "ultimate dream job".<p>Actually, and considering value, I guess my ultimate dream job was building stuff that provided no value whatsoever but fun for me (and others as an added bonus).<p>I'm starting to find too frequently that stuff that provide value actually provide no value at all. Especially on the business software side of things, the idea is usually to ease the lives of the users but in reality, users hate whatever is thrown at them, and with good reason, it usually solves them an existing problem by creating two new ones.

I don't get it. How is arbitrage supposed to increase liquidity, if it is in practice increasing the cost of transaction? Isn't the middleman increasing the friction in the system?

Reminds me of Richard Hamming's saying: "What important problems are you working on?"<p>Very good read - "You and your research" <a href="http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html</a>

In a similar spirit to the article's question I've recently switched the emphasis of my economic thinking from, "How can I make money?" to "Are there any real-world problems I encounter frequently, or know that others are experiencing, that I think <i>I</i> can solve, and make money while doing it?"