Conflict of Interest - Unfair but Necessary?

Misaligned incentives seem to be a common trait in selling financial products. After issuer-paid credit ratings and stock exchanges which cater to high frequency traders, even data releases are not immune to such practices. Thomson Reuters is now under investigation for releasing a well-known customer confidence survey two seconds earlier to select clients for a $6K/month fee. In terms of information fairness, they issue is clear - high frequency traders have a huge advantage other short term traders without such information. However, what is the alternative?

Like free email, the market does not support the conflict-free model for these industries. Few customers are willing to pay for basic email or credit ratings. The later is especially difficult to conceal at the high level because of the ease of free-riding (e.g. a AAA for a company only takes three characters to send and the issuer wants it to be as well known as possible). How else can such companies compete when everybody wants it but nobody is willing to pay by themselves? This is not a defense of such practices, but rather an investigation as to the why.

While we may want this:

(Source: http://thinkbeta.com/blog/2012/01/25/thursday-president-obama-fairness/)

It may be very hard to achieve "absolute" fairness without paying for it in some other way.

This brings up a larger question: are the most profitable operations, in finance and beyond, riddled with conflict of interest? Does "fair" mean unprofitable? As Hank Greenberg once said, "All I want in life is an unfair advantage."