That's a huge article with a lot of data and opinions. My first impression is, TINA.
But in practice it does seem easier lobbying as "low-cost" index funds acting in the favor of the "little guy" protecting people from "lousy active hedge funds," acting in their "own interest." Yet, behind the scenes, the money keeps flowing, assets keep growing in the favor of these oligopolies, and the notion of research about passive investing distorting pricing gets swiftly ignored. How come?
OMG! Index funds aren't really low-cost! Maybe we should be investing with hedge funds and full service brokers instead?!? </s>
Burry may have reach broken clock status, too. Let's not trust his every word because he went big on shorting housing. Here's a quote he retweeted from last summer:
https://twitter.com/burryarchive/status/1540438778174550017?s=10&t=bLiaWn-62Z5OpdGb2Teuhw"Q. In 2022, what brings a Christmas in July?" he wrote. "A. A disinflationary overstock consumer recession at Christmas."
That didn't age well.
Most important is what's stated in the conclusion of the evidentiary study of this long, scary, article.
We emphasize though that the “inelastic market hypothesis” remains just that: a hypothesis. Our empirical analysis relies on a new empirical methodology and on fairly unexplored data in this context.
In order for this seekingalpha article to be correct, we have to accept both a 1:5 ratio and that markets are inelastic, using "fairly unexplored data."
