These companies are just a construct of our imaginations, yet they have the rights of a human being. In this system, you are directly competing against an immortal construct that can accumulate resources on an infinite timescale, or however long the system continues to operate. This allows them to play a much longer game that is inaccessible to us real humans that must abide by our own expiration dates. (a company can have a 100yr plan, you cannot)
Now I'm quite familiar with IP law in general and it upsets me that it has been bastardized and extended way past it's original intention of giving an inventor a 15 yr or whatever head start when they invent something new. This got me thinking though: These companies have so many resources, not only in money but also patents and copyright and it becomes an unstoppable snowballing effect that means you will never come out on top.
The function of a system is determined by it's output, and it seems to be working perfectly fine (for those who designed it)