Reply #3: An individual farmer usually does not have the ability to destroy the economic viability

[T Wolf]

of an entire nation in order to make their hedge bet pay off.

The life insurance company (usually) will not work to cause your life to be extended (not a logical parallel, but the meaning is obvious) so that you keep paying premiums.

It is the scale of the gambling without having to actually put up any money that is causing the problem. What about putting a "table stakes" rule in whereby the "investors" (yeah, right) have to have the cash to cover their losses before they are able to place the bet.

The zero-sum game that the banksters and Wall Street criminals have concocted produces distortion so that they are not really investing, but gambling against the success of something. That is simply immoral and should not be allowed, especially on the scale that these assholes operate.