The P O I N T is money. The old boy network. Rigged game.
You may not have been intentionally referring to retail but that's the flavor. Bids and asks. Ax moves paper. Wholesale to retail and back again. Treated no different than eggs or fish. Day in day out. Moves within broader moves to arrive at price objectives. His. not yours.
Payment for order flow is retail. Probably not as lucrative as block concessions. I'll spare you nominees for board seats and proxies.
It's easier to maneuver a stock's price than a company's earnings (under the kind assumption EPS is precise and kosher).
My suggestion would be to get over the notion of an ax as a kindly old clerk that matches orders to maintain a fair and orderly market and doing it as a public service with compensation being merely the spread and rides the subway home to ask his wife, "what's for supper honey, meat loaf"?