But when you own a website that does "deserve" to rank and Google's algorithm allows for spammers to get to the top, then you have no recourse but to fight fire

But when you own a website that does "deserve" to rank and Google's algorithm allows for spammers to get to the top, then you have no recourse but to fight fire with fire. If I had a great site about my acai berry product, but stuck only to white hat seo techniques, I would literally never rank for that keyword. I would never get that traffic, never get the exposure, because there are people out there who are taking advantage of the holes in Google's algo while I am "sticking to the rules". You have to remember that Google publishes rules for 2 reasons: 1) so that you don't participate in shady tactics that polute the internet (for the greater good) and 2) because their job is to clean up search results so the less "spam" that is produced, the easier their job is. EDIT: left out a key word