It's not by design, though. No one designed this system. It grew, organically. People started recognizing parts of it they could take advantage of, and pushing

It's not by design, though. No one designed this system. It grew, organically. People started recognizing parts of it they could take advantage of, and pushing to have those parts become more prominent, largely individually (as opposed to in one grand conspiracy of collusion). It may be true that some of those people believe it is in their best interests that the markets be "broken", and so have pushed that far intentionally, but there is no one overriding will and no single hand on the rudder to even be able to do that on purpose. It's all just greedy people trying to get their own interests put before everyone else's.