I find it strange that Ayn Rand is not mentioned, she seems to be at the birth of this as well. I still believe strongly in her philosophy, her philosophy is pure but it was corrupted by such things as lobbying.
The ruthlessness is the unethical part, not the free market part. Effort and skill have to be rewarded. But when you add lobbying to the mix, you can be rewarded without effort of skill or you can be punished even while you show effort and have skill but lack a strong relation with those currently in power (the deep state, for lack of a better term, I borrowed it from Zeitgeist (or weltschmerz (a dutch podcast)), a documentary worth watching although I think it goes a bit far near the end of part 2 (addendum).)
Even without lobbying and corruption, economies of scale favor larger corporations over smaller ones. This concentrates wealth, and power, into the hands of ever fewer people - unconstrained, the free market leads to feudalism.
Fast growing startups seem to prove you wrong, just like the fact that Linux concurred the Server market or that Microsoft and IBM lost a lot of market share to Apple which in turn lost market share to Google. I think these are examples of fair competition: A large company grows stale or is aware of a trend to late and someone else jumps into a market hole they missed. This is a natural stop for monopolies (ok, the ISP situation in the US is something else, I agree, the cost to enter that market is extreme and you don't "share the copper/fiber" with multiple companies as other countries do).
The lobbying problem however pertains to companies such as Bechtel, Halliburton (construction), Raytheon (weapons manufacturer) and Monsanto (Genetically engineered crops) and many other operating at a level known in "Confessions of an economic hitman" as the Corporatocracy. In general these are companies further removed from the voters, and politicians serve as their proxies in order to obtains funds to be an influential politician in the first place.
So you would be in favour of an otherwise free market, but with the government breaking up companies that grow too* big? I.e., you agree excessive concentration of money and power is harmful, and would be willing to compromise free market ideals to prevent it?
Also, just because -some- companies can outperform larger ones in some areas, does not mean greater size does not have significant advantages. There's a good reason there's no mom&pop car manufacturers.
*E.g. so big that consumers no longer have a meaningful choice, or so big that they start to benefit from monopoly pricing or price collusion, or are able to make use of anti-competitive practices, such as stores selling their own brands more prominently.
I'm not arguing for intervention at all. I arguing against lobbying. Lobbying makes a market non-free, you know, when voters have to save an investment bank that is too large to fail while said bank cost them their jobs and their house. Such things can only happen in a corrupt society. I'm not claiming to have the solution I'm merely claiming that we should decouple politics from the wealthy and recouple it with everybody else.
I'm talking Rothschild, Bush, Rockefeller, deep state, old money. Such people don't mess around in the bay area, they mess around with the Fed and the IMF.
The ruthlessness is the unethical part, not the free market part. Effort and skill have to be rewarded. But when you add lobbying to the mix, you can be rewarded without effort of skill or you can be punished even while you show effort and have skill but lack a strong relation with those currently in power (the deep state, for lack of a better term, I borrowed it from Zeitgeist (or weltschmerz (a dutch podcast)), a documentary worth watching although I think it goes a bit far near the end of part 2 (addendum).)