actually, yes they are. That’s why prudent people put money in an FDIC-insured CD in a bank: they’re not going to get rich off of that, but they have the right to expect a modest but decent return on that investment.
They do have that right. Same with people who invest in mutual funds for the long term.
What you’re talking about is a scenario where the only people that matter are the day traders and the venture capitalists who, in your mind, are the only people who really “create wealth”. And that the rest of society should live, die, rise and fall with them since all the positive externalities they enjoy are supposed to be attributable solely to the risk-takers.
Clue for you: not only do the financial markets not, in fact, work that way (wealth is not, in fact, created solely via high-risk speculation; wealth *bubbles* are created that way), most of society simply will not live that way.
Most humans attempt to minimize risk. If you tell them that in truth, no matter what they do, they have no financial security, so they might as well hop on the high-risk investment train, they’ll tell you to go straight to h*ll. And then they’ll vote for the “stability” of socialism. And I, for one, wouldn’t blame them given those two options.