NMS and Competitiveness: Two competing views

(Above: Porter's Five-Forces Model)
Brian Pears, head of equity trading for Victory Capital, spun an editorial in Traders Magazine where he criticizes Regulation NMS. (see article here: http://tinyurl.com/5z343). Suffice to say, Pears remarks reflect the general sentiment of institutional players that have been raised in a NYSE-country-club environment.

Pears' view regarding Regulation NMS getting in the way of competition in the US capital markets contradicts the views of Jerry Putnam, Arca's CEO. This NMS-competitiveness dichotomy is a microcosm of the larger debate that's taking place about NMS.

Consider Porters Five Forces (see: above or http://tinyurl.com/3wkse which many regard as the holy grail of understanding competition in terms of marketing (i.e, taking market share):


Here's what I mean:
Pears' View: (source: http://tinyurl.com/5z343)
[Regulation NMS] carries the potential to completely destroy the competitive, if fragmented, market structure that's existed for years. And it deserves your attention. These proposed changes got me thinking. If our new goal to reinvent markets by making block trading obsolete and killing competition

Putnam's View: (source: http://tinyurl.com/6r8z6)
Inter-market trading rules that govern the way exchanges interact with one another are extremely anti-competitive and make it difficult for electronic exchanges like ours to compete with the NYSE

Brian Pears: It carries the potential to completely destroy the competitive, if fragmented, market structure that's existed for years. And it deserves your attention. These proposed changes got me thinking. If our new goal to reinvent markets by making block trading obsolete and killing competition