Wall Street has normalized a tax on being slower than its fastest computers

Why do we allow an entire industry to profit from prices being a few milliseconds out of date?

Like, your computer was faster than someone else’s so you get to skim a little money off the transaction? And we just call that market efficiency?

I get that some arbitrage keeps prices accurate. But surely we can design markets where being faster doesn’t automatically mean getting richer at everyone else’s expense.

It’s like we’ve institutionalized cutting in line and started charging everyone else for the privilege.

Am I missing something or is this just a really elaborate way of stealing pennies from people who can’t even see it happening? Fook that shiz