[yummyfajitas]

Assuming that by "HFT", you actually mean all sorts of algorithmic trading, we are worse off because we have humans doing the work of a computer. If all computerized trading were slowed down by a constant factor of 1000, the world would never notice and HFTs wouldn't care.

I agree with you on wasting talent winning a race rather than creating new value: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2093334

But I don't agree with you that the majority of the finance industry falls into that category. Most trading is not a race. HFT is not representative of the financial sector. The entire HFT sector is only about $20B, which is a little more than double Goldman's profits last year.