What makes men obey and tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical...because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed.
This seems especially applicable to stock-trading hedge funds [EDIT: really should be talking about proprietary trading here], who don't appear to do anything worthwhile for anyone at all, except the fund managers and maybe their investors. [EDIT: what I mean is, that adding liquidity to the marketplace isn't all that helpful if it all goes away at the times when the markets need liquidity. Once you have an established market, adding more players doesn't have linearly increasing benefits, esp. social. The underlying idea being diminishing returns I suppose.]
