The "free choice" argument is a charade: the only people with the "freedom" (ie, wealth) to win that race are "people" like Goldman Sachs. On the whole, it's just another legal mechanism for pumping money from the poor to the wealthy. Modern markets could not exist without regulation, which by definition limits freedoms. We're just talking about a sensible regulation that eliminates a pointless misdirection of resources, not unlike laws against gambling.

A lot of HTF shops are comparatively tiny companies (in the order of hundreds or less employees). Large hedge funds and investment banks are relatively late players to the game.

You didn’t address my comment at all. This just seems like some unfounded normative assertions about some other thing entirely.