cannibalizing everything (.......)

[Ostap]

Patently ridiculous though it was, the now infamous Pepsi video was a kind of extreme case study in what happens when market forces spend the better part of four decades cannibalizing everything in their path, from entitlements and trade union rights to the conceptual repertoires of social justice and intersectionality.
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Hello, everyone. What does "cannibalize" mean in this sentence?

 

[emsr2d2]

Gobbling it up for its own benefit.

 

[SoothingDave]

The definition of "cannibalize" in this sense is to use pieces and parts of one thing in order to make a second, similar thing function.

A good example of this is if you have two cars that don't run, but you are able to take parts of one to make the other work.