Re, VC money creating a rat-race, I think you're probably right.
Though I think there must remain a slice of the market that's not determined by the rat race. But it could well be the slice of the market that VCs aren't interested in funding because it's not big or fast enough. I guess I would cite something like Linux as an example. It's not really a start-up but by not being fuelled by money, and being open-source, it was able to under-cut and out-compete Microsoft and a bunch of other OSs in the hobbyists -> server -> mobile. But I suppose it became a platform that a bunch of other businesses like Redhat and Android were able to launch off.
But yeah I guess the general trend is profit invites competition, and competition is amoral.
Let's be clear, it's access to capital rather than technology that has made US startups more valuable (which is weird, given that the easiest way to make a startup more valuable is to invest more money at a higher valuation).
If you look at (almost) all of the recent tech giants, it was the capital they got that allowed them to outcompete the rest of the world, not the technology (which is mostly available to the whole world).
Looks like Henry Ford discovered that profit was affected by overworking. He was still maximizing that function, no?
Sometimes that function includes making the worker happier, but sometimes it is inversely related.
re: startups, my point was that they have near zero chance of succeeding against large incumbents by moving at a leisurely pace. Sure, great technologies can be invented slowly. But once great tech is given VC money, it's a race. That race has created such a lead between the US and every other country in the tech world.