The old saying has it that our weaknesses are just our strengths taken to excess. Competitiveness fits that mold.

Goodhart's Law is also worth considering. When a metric becomes a target, it stops being a good metric. That's certainly the case for the big-antlered deer (Irish Elk, I think). When the females started using rack size (who says the sexes are different?) as an indicator of mating competence, nature responded by making big antlers a "target," and when it became a target, it stopped being a measure of mating competence.

Index funds are a response to hypercompetition for alpha. So long as there are enough competitors to drive the market bus somewhat efficiently, the rest of us can ride our bikes in the slipstream, getting the beta, which accounts for most of the increase in value anyway.