The question is: can you adopt to greedy exploitation without becoming more greedy yourself? (Or similarly, can you adopt to violence without escalating the violence?)

My answer is: yes you can, but it is hard. There is no easy solution: you have to upgrade constantly your "half-measures".

In particular, cooperation (or solidarity) must be a key tool in taming over-competative maniacs. That may "limit their freedoms", but you have to be kind to yourself first.

Short term bully and long term sustainability do fight. We may just living in cusp times where short term bully looks unbeatable. But the bully will beat itself badly, before long.