For the incredibly small minority of people who can engage in it, and who enjoy special rules, maybe. For the majority of the people who's money is actually extracted by this system, it's an exclusive club.
> Without HFT, bid offers would be wider. Fact.
The majority of people who just want to save for retirement would prefer wider bid offers instead of having such a large chunk of money extracted from their future bank accounts. Fact.
The other reason why HFT is non-competitive is that you cannot go and start a market with your own rules without being deeply in bed with the government and the financial status quo. HFT is forced down our throats by a system that calls itself capitalistic but thrives on enjoying custom-made loopholes in heavily-regulated statism.