I also could not agree more with this. Back in my day the shops made players have to travel to spawn and look around the shops. Now its like a Walmart moved into town and you can just go to the Global Market, heck you can even buy a Global Market chest from the HC store and place it in your town/house.
There are only 2 shops in the trade district, no one uses the cool advertising billboard spaces. The economy is kind of a single blade sword with the Global Market, no need to go around to each shop and see who has the lowest prices anymore.
Getting rid of the Global Market would increase player interaction, make the merchant profession more useful again, would probably help stabilize the economy because people would be paying more money to the server to rent out the shops, and get players familiar with spawn.
I have new players that join my town that just use Town Spawn to get to my town and they never have a need to go to the main spawn, a lot don't even know anything is outside of the first area where the exchange and nexus is.
I feel with all the teleport options, global market, and people easily being able to max classes in a few days, we are just catering to making people more lazy. Luckily this weekend player exp and leveling will be fixed, but the first two issues I mentioned need to be looked at still.