I get the feeling that I've pissed you off. I'm sorry if I'm done something wrong; I'm honestly just trying to understand why everybody's so angry.
-wall street does *not* exist for the purposes of making money for those who play there
But that's a side effect of any sufficiently-liquid market, isn't it? The *purpose* of the market seems not too relevant to me; you can't realistically expect to control everybody's motivations for participating in the market.
Going another step, why shouldn't "arbitrage" (quotes for the pedantic) be a part of the market? This is a real question; I'm not trying to push a philosophy here. What's so bad about that? Either you want to participate in that kind of market and you do. Or you dislike what it does to the market and you opt out. Who's the victim here?
Maybe the real issue that has people so worked up is that we've put our financial security into the hands of greedy people who make high-risk bets with our money. Well... maybe we shouldn't do that if we don't like it? Maybe those who are comfortable with that can participate in the market and those who aren't should skip it?
It's not that I'm arguing that the market *should* be the way it is, because I don't really know. I just really don't understand the vitriol. I look at HFT and think "they're making a ton of money playing within the rules... um, ok; why is that bad for me?". Really, if it's bad for me and I don't get it, please explain it to me, because I'd like to understand what I'm missing.