This is the point where I think the free market is screwed up. Capitalism is about competition, not annihilation. Olympic athletes compete to determine who is best. They aren't allowed to sneak around before the race trying to kill one another, winning the race simply because nobody is left to run.
Similarly, the benefits of capitalism arise from the forces of competition, and are decreased or eliminated as competition is decreased or eliminated. Competing companies must continually produce better products at a lower cost, or lose customers as a result. When they turn to strategies other than honest competition to stay in business, it throws a wrench in the works.
More and more, businesses don't seem to be interested in competing, but in eliminating competition by various means, destructive and cooperative.
The strategy of simply spending the competition into the ground because you have piles of cash is one that I find particularly unethical. It severely tilts the playing field, yielding victory not to the best product, nor to the most efficient producer, but to the one who can muster enough cash to cover all his inadequacies!
That's harmful to the market and to the consumer. It's anti-capitalist and should be illegal, IMO.
Ah, Tanya Harding.
More and more, businesses don't seem to be interested in competing, but in eliminating competition by various means
One of the biggest old-time examples I can remember is the trucking industry, where the big trucking firms would undercut the independent truckers for hauls, even if they had to do it for free, in order to put the independents out of business.