have you seen stock market these days?
The problem with the stock market is when there aren't enough new companies going public to soak up the spigot of all the capital that people want to invest, leading average P/E ratios to increase over time. There is too much money chasing too few earnings. When the underlying fundamentals don't match up, then all that investors are doing is speculating that someone else will be the bigger fool and buy from them at an even more unreasonable price - and that is a gamble.
Short term trading, however ...
Maybe we should just put limits on how short one can own a stock (?)
Making a sudden event that happened on the other side of the world reflect in the local market price at almost the speed of light is far more meaningful work than going around shooting dark-skinned people.
Sophisticated investors would never be on the other side of the trade. Add to that bigger spreads and unsophisticated market participants get fleeced. As they wouldn't want to get fleeced they would hire an intermediary to do trades for them - a stock broker who again charges commission.
We already had that: spreads were bigger, prices were less efficient. The main victims were retail/naive investors and the main beneficiaries would be big institutions, brokers and sophisticated investors.
Current system benefits:
-retail/unsophisticated investors
-vanishingly small group of the best/fastest/most sophisticated traders
Who lost:
-big institutions, banks, stock brokers
-investing wannabes who no longer get access to easy money from retail/naive buyers
You seem to assume there is a pool of sharks that prey on pure souls without fast connection. It's not the case at all. Most HFTs lose money without exchange incentives which are provided because exchanges understand liquidity and low spreads are good for other participants. The pool of people who make money out of spreads/inefficient prices is way lower than it used to be as well.
The best possible world would have efficient prices every nano-second coming from god himself. Having a group of very sophisticated market makers is the second best we can have - at least if you care about normal investors who don't have resources to process all the information themselves.
But do I want the prices to be as efficient as possible?
Also considering that these traders will use their $100k in ways that my $1 will become worth even less. For example by buying all the housing in my neighborhood and thereby increasing my rent.
Electronic trading doesn't need to go away. The trade itself might take some time instead of being functionally instant, but that's fine.
Imagine news broke that makes a company worth 15% less. Naive investors isn't aware of it and makes their bid on the market. They look at a recent price, make some offer and buys the shares now worth 15% less while bankers who were able to process the information just made a killing. This is even worse in "slow exchanges" where participants need to come-up with bid price themselves because recent transaction price is not a relevant indicator of fair value.