If a market maker or specialist or a local is making a market for you he is required to honor his markets. By being required to honor his markets he is taking much more risk then someone who can post a bid and pull it or post an offer and pull it. If he is taking this extra added risk he will be compensated for it or.....he will not participate in the process because there is no advantage for him to do so. Why would anyone want to take any risk if he had no upside? Just doesn't work that way. I can't buy a car at cost, I can't buy a beer at cost, I can't buy a house at cost, and whoever took the risk to make the product is going to want some margin of profit. Yes, that includes the guys on the screens. There is no good guy or bad guy; there is a guy that is on the other side of your order. I can assure you that if his markup was too high, no one would buy his cars, his beers, his house or his futures contract, they would take their business elsewhere and his job would cease to exist hence the world of capitalism and survival of the fittest. These guys stand on the floor and they take the other side of your order. They assume all the risk. So when someone comes in to buy 1000 straddles on XYZ a day before a bankruptcy announcement these guys in the XYZ pit take the other side of that trade being clueless about the news. So they wake up the next morning and see the news and now some of those guys careers are over. What do you want them to do? Sell options at fair value; sell futures at parity with the electronic market? You tell me? Should these people be compensated at all for taking the risk that you lay on them? They keep the system running. These guys are willing to absorb your risk and all they want in return is a spread. Remember what happened in 1998 when Russia defaulted on their debts and there was no liquidity to speak of in the fixed income markets. In fact LTCM was trying desperately to get out of some on their bonds and these guys on the screen refused to make markets, they refused to give quotes. The end result. A 10 billion dollar hedge fund went up in smoke and the entire economy almost collapsed. Oh and they called it a liquidity crisis. I think too many people take for granted the liquidity they get every day like it’s their right. It's not a right, it's a privilege, and don't forget for a sec who gives you that privilege every day.