I'm not so sure. I interviewed at a Wall Street company that was programming data channels headed into the black-boxes. They boasted that 30% of trades were dealt with by computers. I mentioned that that should probably be enough to drive some pretty serious feedback effects. I asked: in principle, if these black-boxes handled all the trades, where would the decision to trade or not come from.
Instead of a blank stare, I was presented a cold, nervous look. He said "basically all these algorithms have been worked out in the 70's and 80's, in Academia. Nobody really knows what they're doing, or why they're doing it. But they are trying to compete by getting more data faster than the next guy. If everyone trades the same, as long as you trade faster, you'll win."
I asked if it was moral to play such a risky game with the economy.
I didn't get the job.
It's like the thousands of entrepreneurs that saw Friendster and said "Oh look, only one competitor in the market, I'll build myself a social network and get rich!" Or the thousands of entrepreneurs that saw Reddit and Digg and said "Oh look, only two competitors in the market, I'll build myself a social bookmarking site and get rich!" Or the thousands of entrepreneurs that saw YouTube and said "Oh look, only one competitor in the market, I'll build myself a video sharing site and get rich!"
The only way to get rich is to build things where there are zero popular competitors in the market, or where there are 1-2 competitors and everyone believes it's fruitless to compete with them. Otherwise, you can bet that thousands of people you haven't heard of are doing the same thing, and by the time you get a product out they'll be getting a product out too.
(Incidentally, the first few quant hedge funds, like Renaissance or D.E. Shaw, made out like bandits.)