Yeah, it is theoretically possible to have a marketplace where "predatory pricing" is an accepted though aggressive business strategy, and I'd say that we are roughly there in the US. But the original intent behind the law on the books was to make markets friendly to new entrants, even if that meant sometimes constraining what large participants were allowed to do.
This is an historical question I’m not equipped to answer, but I’d guess it was just the opposite: These laws were intended to protect incumbents from more efficient, better financed new competitors!
