Haha, very good. Hopefully we'll never be plowing our common fields together, but I also hope the hypothetical of an "idealized world" still gets my point across about prop trading programmers. It's not that they're not crucial participants in financial markets, but it's a stretch to think the liquidity provided has a brilliant part in advancing our society. Liquidity is around today primarily for speculation and valuation; it doesn't have the same meaning as it does when you're talking about the foundations of an ideal capitalistic economy.

No, you're not really getting these programmers working on brokerage accounts. These are prop traders and programmers, and the volume of them in the market means there's probably always a price and market.