Many of those that want to become traders or investors never really think about the consequences and the nature of the markets, all of them think about the money that they are going to earn not realizing that such amount of money has to come from somewhere and it comes from other traders, and if you come to the market with no knowledge about fundamental analysis or technical analysis then most likely you are going to be one of those that lose their money.
And then when they lose they complain about the manipulations of the market and how unfair it is that some traders have so much money when they should have thought about all of those factors before they became traders and not after they became losers in the market.
This is a simple law of trading rather every business. The loss of one person is the profit of others. Trading is not a market owned by anyone. Common traders are making this platform which means there is no external source of money. As you said there are simply two options left then, either you become a loser or winner. You need to study complete market first in order to understand tricks of becoming a winner.
And most traders do not realize that they take the decision to be a loser or a winner the moment they enter the market, if a person decides to trade but he has made no efforts to read any books about trading, money management skills, investments or any other skill that could help him to become a more effective trader then even if he does not know it he has taken the decision of being a loser in this market.
On the other hand if a person reads as many books as possible about the topic, creates a strategy and then he tests that strategy against many markets and he finds out that he can earn money in the markets in the long term then that person has decided to be a winner.