It’s an important function, but the guys making these bets frequently pull down $10-$100M per year, each. That’s a huge toll to extract from the productive economy for playing this game.

And then there are the guys managing things like pensions, skimming a percentage every year, just because they happen to be locked into that position, meanwhile underperforming a basket of index funds. Just happily eating away at the retirement savings of thousands-millions.

There's no such thing as money being squandered. Money isn't a resource. It's not food, or energy, or even an allotment of work.

If you try to seize or reduce, what you perceive as excess, wasted money supply, that money supply will simply cease to exist.