Funny fact. A lot of people in finance seems to believe that they are making things more efficient and removing people. And yet the finance industry as a whole continues to grow rapidly relative to the rest of the economy. Also their share of profits relative to companies in the "real" economy is at historic highs.
I submit that you're doing the exact opposite of what you think you are. When you make financial manipulation require fewer highly paid people, you increase profit margins. The primary effect of this is to increase the volume of such activity.
Oh, absolutely. However what the software industry enables more of is often stuff that I think is good.
For instance I have 2 contracts right now. One will help people find a college program that they want, and the other will help people find a job that they want. These are causes whose value proposition is pretty clear to me. I don't need to justify my work on the basis of, "I'm getting rid of people who do what I do." Rather I can say, "I'm helping good things happen for people."
Thus I don't see a problem in the fact that my successes create more demand for people like me.
On the one hand, I'm helping people preserving their pension funds by detecting risky situations early. These people don't want highly speculative markets or high profits, they don't want their savings protected from the money printing machine among other things.
I'm also helping decide producers what should they be doing next, to meet demand and so people don't suffer shortages. I don't work for a bucket shop or a commodity hoarding fund. I help supply meet demand and more people have their needs met and better met than otherwise thanks to people like me. There would be a lot more poverty in the world without this industry. In fact, there was a lot more poverty in the world as a direct result of the lack of this level of commerce in the past. It's not our duty to stop the poorest regions of the world from over-breeding, though, which is the main reason for poverty nowadays (including pockets of poverty in wealthy nations).
I submit that you're doing the exact opposite of what you think you are. When you make financial manipulation require fewer highly paid people, you increase profit margins. The primary effect of this is to increase the volume of such activity.