No, it just moves the race from getting the first order at the +0.01/-0.01 band placed to getting the first order priced .00000001 better than the top placed before a liquidity-taking order comes in.
There is no really easy way to "get rid of HFT", and it's unclear whether we actually want to do that. Equity trading is very cheap & efficient w/ tiny spreads on everything remotely liquid. Pretty much the only people who get hurt by HFT are big institutional investors (hedge funds, etc) that used to be able to move big blocks of stock without affecting the price as much as they now do. If anything - the pricing is better now. If you own a truckload of oranges and you hear that someone is going around frantically buying up all the oranges at every store, do you not feel like you should consider raising the price of your oranges?
I'm unsure how it doesn't fix the speed advantage. Anyone can get in front by bidding a millionth cent more. You can keep doing that until the price starts mattering, right?
I'm not against HFT at all. But having such granular pricing doesn't do anyone favours. More decimals would reduce spreads as well as silencing HFT critics and maybe make trading a bit more accessible without as much high end systems. But the spread reduction is valuable alone.
There is no really easy way to "get rid of HFT", and it's unclear whether we actually want to do that. Equity trading is very cheap & efficient w/ tiny spreads on everything remotely liquid. Pretty much the only people who get hurt by HFT are big institutional investors (hedge funds, etc) that used to be able to move big blocks of stock without affecting the price as much as they now do. If anything - the pricing is better now. If you own a truckload of oranges and you hear that someone is going around frantically buying up all the oranges at every store, do you not feel like you should consider raising the price of your oranges?