It's nothing like that since there isn't a limited resource and everyone has access to the core purpose, which is to trade stocks.

What I notice with these discussions is that no one can actually explain why a retail investor or anyone would want computers trading underneath them millions of times a second.

At best they try to give hft credit for the automation that happened with computers anyway.

The only people that want it are the people doing it. That's not a business, that's a grift.