Would you rather have a person or a machine serve as the market maker? If anything, HFTs have made it cheaper to trade. Because of the way exchanges are setup,

Would you rather have a person or a machine serve as the market maker? If anything, HFTs have made it cheaper to trade. Because of the way exchanges are setup, the man in the middle will always be making a cut of the trades. Now though that cut is measured in pennies rather than what used to be often 1/2 dollar spreads. Sure some of the predatory algorithmic trading serves no benefit to anyone, but you will always have people gaming/attacking the system if there's arbitrage potential.