Aesthetic preferences exist for a reason, they've also been selected for and would often correlate with health indicators.
In the end reproductive success is all that's selected for, even at the expense of the host for the gene, like in the case of the peacock where their long tail makes them easy prey but also makes them easier to identify for a peahen.
Chris Stucchio wrote an interesting blog post which changed my mind on this. Instead of exacerbating it, a Machine Learning model can actively correct for bias.
You'd always prefer $100 today vs $100 in a year. In order to convince someone to invest you need to offer them more than that in the future.
If the discount rate is 10% (not bank interest, just how much I personally value time) then unless you offer me more than $ 110, I'd rather spend the money now.
For people to invest, discounted_expected_return[1] - capital_gains should be higher than the money in their wallets.
You can play around in excel to understand this better, with a 5% return, a 20% tax on both income and capital gains and a 10% discount rate, $ 100 in income is either $ 80 today or $ 76 in a year.
Finance isn't evil; day trading, investment banking, venture capital are all sharing information with the world and trying to move money to places where its more valuable.
There is a case to be made about "negative externalities"[1] but talking about the whole of finance as unnecessary is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
The reason we (as a society) inflate currencies is because of "sticky wages". People are loss averse and react much worse to a 5% pay cut than positively to a 5% pay rise.
Because of this, businesses needing to adjust downwards because of competition/technology/market changes can't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_liberalisation_in_Ind...