Sure. All I was saying is that it's theoretically possible for a market order that a customer submits online to be front-run (as opposed to a market order submitted to a single exchange). No clue how often it happens in practice.
> I'm pretty sure you misunderstand market orders because by definition they are only visible to the market after they have traded, so nobody can get ahead of you or do sonething irrational before your order lands.
Have you read Flash Boys? Dunno if the loop-holes have all been solved, but basically it was possible to front-run orders. There was a regulation requiring brokers to execute an order on the exchange that had the best current price. This rule gave no weight to size. So HFT firms could place a tiny, negative expectancy order on one exchange. Then they could see the result of that trade and cancel/place orders on the next exchange that your broker's matching algorithm was going to hit up before your order got there.
I mean many people start bodegas, restaurants, etc. I imagine that's more akin to 19th century entrepreneurship and still is by far the most prevalent form of entrepreneurship today (only like 1.3% of businesses are created in the Bay area and 1.1% of the population lives there).
> Middlemen, example Amazon, have never been stronger.
The strength of a middleman can be directly measured by how much they mark up prices. Does amazon really mark up prices more than the brick and mortar retailers it replaced?