I realize this is about a million times easier said than done - not least because I am trying to do it and it is in fact very hard - but you refute it by doing it better yourself.

I think we've all kind of internalized this idea that you have to be a shark to do business. But insofar as businesses are profitable (and many are), every dollar of profit represents a dollar of ruthlessness that that company didn't have to execute. If a company has a 10% profit margin, they can be 10% less ruthless, and that turns out to buy their way out of a lot of the worst abuses. Or at least it could if the company's leadership wanted it to.

But there is absolutely nothing stopping you, in principle, from starting a company of your own, choosing not to hand de facto control over it to shareholders, and making the executive decision not to screw people for an extra dollar. You can do that. In fact, the Flappy Bird guy did exactly that - it's just that in this case he got outmaneuvered by predatory jerks. (Or, if you want to frame it differently: he got outcompeted in the legal arena, as obviously wrong as that is in this instance.)

The only problem here is that he lost, so...you know, don't lose. Be as much of a shark as you need to be to do business and defend yourself against the other sharks, but no more than that, and you'll be doing a lot better than the status quo.