IMO I wasn't around 40 years ago but from what I've gathered from Market Wizards this is just history repeating itself. There will be a lot of competing exchanges but eventually the best will be sifted out. It is certainly an area ripe for innovation. There's is absolutely no reason commissions, etc, need to be as high as they are in general given that just about everything is done over the wire and open outcry is all but dead.
Think the business has come a long way. I mean 10 years ago when I looked into trading, the big banks here in Canada were all charging 29.99 a trade. Their down to 6.99/9.99 which is still steep. I can’t remember what Trader it was, but they were talking about getting chart books from IBD I think weekly, and it’d leave 5 bars blank on the right and you’d fill the prices in off the newspaper and get a new book the next week. Then I guess from what I understand you’d call your broker up to place a trade and wait for a call back for what price and size you had got. Sounds tricky and expensive. Here we are complaining about .01 a share prices and market data being too expensive lol.