having the govt sponsor yer business competitors, /cd?

I built up, very slowly, over a period of years, brand awareness in our area for this specialist product I sell. Last year I took a big hit on it tho' b/c this guy opened up the road from us, and he sells the same thing, but at a cut price (personally I'm not into price wars, the only place they lead for a small business is bankrupcy, so I just scaled back on it and looked for different stuff to sell) Anyway, this place has a fancy website, and I'm looking into getting one put together for myself, so I looked at his, and checked out the co who designed it. On their page, it pointed out that the competitor's business startup had been largely financed by the local development agency. Not the first time this has happened, but man what a pisser nevertheless. Is it acceptable for a local authority to effectively sponsor someone's startup, when that business is going to undercut their pre-existing local competition by selling the same product at an unsustainable markup? Should one bother actually running a the business that it actually says you do on yr storefront, advertising etc, or would it be more prudent to spend ones efforts pruning the local grant tree? You can probably tell I'm a bit pissed off by this.