Well, how much do brilliant people who spend their lives trying to get you to click on ads add to society? Not to mention something awful like Zynga.

Still those people enable things like Google that do add a lot.

The issue with HFT is, in the old days the marketmaker got first look, and in exchange was limited in what they could do in terms of front-running and market manipulation, and was supposed to maintain an orderly market. The HFTs took over the liquidity-providing functions but it seems pretty wild west, and if the market really goes nuts they step away.

Still, the only reason there is big money available to build things like Google is because there is a liquid stock market for them, and one that learns and evolves, which HFT is part of.

I posted a URL-shorted link to Gawker's infamous Weiner 'c*ck shot' headline - mysteriously disappeared from my timeline. I thought maybe it was a glitch but I saw it in Tweetdeck timeline, so apparently it went out, and was subsequently 'disappeared.' Seems to be a lot you can't talk about.

Do you like my whiteboard underwear? In comes with a dry erase marker in there, just feel around.

sounds like something an orgone generator could have easily cured because 1) due to parts shortage the station was OFF and 2) it was a RECEIVING station.

- suppose a car company has a monopoly in Oceania

- it has a monopoly, so the profit-maximizing price in the home market is above the marginal cost

- in other words, you build a $5b plant, each additional car costs $5,000 to make, you sell them for $10,000. Sell 100,000 cars, make $500m on your $5b investment.

- if you cut the price $1000, you would sell more cars, but the profit would shrink on every car, so you maximize profit by keeping the price $10,000. If there were competitors, they would cut prices to compete for market share, but this is a monopoly so there's no reason to cut the price.

- suppose you have capacity to make 200,000 cars. Now you turn around and sell additional cars in Eurasia for $6,000. You're still making $1,000, but only because the home market is paying for your plant, and that price makes it uneconomical for Eurasia to build its own car plants.

- Depending on your point of view, Eurasia slaps anti-dumping duties of $4,000 on each car to eliminate market distortions. Or car companies and labor unions employ lobbyists to eliminate competition and screw consumers by slapping $4,000 per car 'anti-dumping' duties.