Actually, Dr. Prahalad at the University of Michigan defined the Rule of Three that goes into more depth of the economic Darwinism you describe. In short, in an market, there will be 3 dominant players and several niche players. In the US market, 100 years ago we had over 100 carmakers. By 1980 we had, guess what, three! Now that the "market" includes the world wide market, the rule of three will be applied to this widened market. To date, several foreign auto companies have bit the dust. There simply is no room for 3 major US auto makers in the global market.
I guess it doesn’t really matter. The American taxpayer will be there to make sure the big 3 don’t fail regardless of that theory.