The question, from a society-design point of view, is whether it is useful to have a whole class of people who engage in what is ultimately a zero-sum game and therefore an arms race, and whether it wouldn't be better to design markets in such a way that a large buy order can be placed without having to be an expert at HFT.
After all, the market is supposed to be useful for organizing long-term investments. The short-term stuff is pretty far removed from the progress of society.
"After all, the market is supposed to be useful for organizing long-term investments"
This is a very HN specific way of thinking (and probably obvious given the startup culture here) but it is not a truism. Many, many, many (perhaps most) market participants are not involved in the markets to organize long term investments. They are there to hedge risk (whole classes of exchanges exist nearly solely for this, think commodities markets).
But that is the glory of the markets. You can be a participant who is looking for long term investment, Southwest Airlines can be there to hedge risk, and I can be there to make a dime fast and we can all participate in what seems to be a zero sum game and win.
That's what I've always thought as well. We have large numbers of very intelligent people dedicating all their efforts to playing games with the values of real companies. It seems like a massive waste of talent IMHO.
Is this comment real? You made this comment on a site that most people use to waste time, and where one of the top posts is an Assembly implementation of Flappy Bird.
Fun fact: HFT has an annual revenue ~1/50th[1][2] of Google's. What's worse: a few hundred people wasting their time moving prices of select stocks a few pennies, or several thousand wasting their time collecting scary amounts of data about you to try and get you to click an ad?
After all, the market is supposed to be useful for organizing long-term investments. The short-term stuff is pretty far removed from the progress of society.