Right - I guess my point is that competitiveness in of itself is not useful. Competitiveness is really just motivation/drive. It's important and necessary and we can use it to reach our goals. But competitiveness for competitiveness-sake leads to bad things. Other people are harmed along the way, shareholders don't make as much money as they could, etc.
It's a merit for the fewest number of people. Not to get all socialism on this. Cutthroat certainly moved advancement forward by leaps and bounds (industrialization, Dot Com, etc.) but it comes with an awful lot of drawbacks at the same time (Pollution, Taking disproportionate advantage of the workforce, making evil decisions because 'it's cheaper to pay the family of the deceased than it is to fix the problem')
An attribute being distasteful doesn't mean that attribute doesn't make the holder better adjusted to some environments.