It’s possible for the stock market only to grow because it externalizes costs (environmental damage, health of workers, etc.), and if that’s the case, we need to see if society is actually proceeding in a positive direction as a whole (I generally believe this to be the case), but consider for a moment that the economic windfall experienced by many western nations was (and still is in many ways, think banana plantations) largely made possible by the subjugation of imperialized nations. In this case, was the economic windfall experienced by the imperial powers and their trade partners actually a good for society as a tide that rose all boats, or not?

If we fail to consider the biggest losers of the stock market, those that cannot even necessarily participate, it becomes much closer to gambling at the very least. I’m not here to have an argument about whether or not capitalism and the stock market and such things are actually good or bad for society as a whole, just that it’s easy to ignore the biggest losers of the system by virtue of the fact that they don’t necessarily even invest in the first place. In this case, the universe is the casino, and humanity are the gamblers, as compared to just the stock market being the casino and the investors the gamblers.

Not that your comment is wrong necessarily just that there’s more ways of thinking about it.