> And are these benefits worth the massive amount of wealth extraction from the rest of us that HFTers are engaged in?
Unless you were a specialist market maker or pit trader on an exchange there hasn't been any "wealth extraction". Quite the opposite, HFT has taken a system built on being tall, having good connections, and understanding an arcane set of hand signals (not to mention very high fees) and replaced it with a ruthlessly efficient automated system based on being good at writing software and planning network setups (and brought the fees down with it).
For the vast majority of market participants HFT has been a massive upgrade over the old system and dramatically lowered the cost of trading.
Unless you were a specialist market maker or pit trader on an exchange there hasn't been any "wealth extraction". Quite the opposite, HFT has taken a system built on being tall, having good connections, and understanding an arcane set of hand signals (not to mention very high fees) and replaced it with a ruthlessly efficient automated system based on being good at writing software and planning network setups (and brought the fees down with it).
For the vast majority of market participants HFT has been a massive upgrade over the old system and dramatically lowered the cost of trading.