On Competition

This is a modified post from:
http://www.newshabit.net/index.cfm?id=3040

This is my opinion on Competition, particularly on value-systems that claim "Competition" whenever you ask them to list their solutions:

Some things in life you can not choose.

You will require health, you rarely even determine when.
You will require education.
You will require food.
You will require hydro.
You will require a certain quality and volume of trinkets.
You will require communication.
You will require transportation.
You will require some spiritual and sexual bullshit.

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The solution of the value-system of 'free-market' is 'competition'. And then they shut up. Accepted the word 'competition' and then went home feeling good.


Here is a quick study on (Solution #1: Competition) -

Competition -
But every Value-system ever made, has competition:


Competition In Soviet Russia, centralized state-owned economy, people compete to be as near or as trusted by the central planners as possible. They compete.

Competition In Theocracies, people compete to be as close to or as trusted by the theocrats as possible. They compete.

Competition In Evolution - There are selectors (Fitness, adaptability, sexual, strength, etc..), and based on the selectors, the systems will compete against each other. They compete.

Competition In Anarchy - Compete to be the most independent member.

Competition in Sports - Compete to win a medal within very well advertised and advertised regulations. they compete.

The largest issue with the value-system of 'free-marketeering', is you ask them a question, and then they will parrot their accepted (Solution #1: Competition) (Solution #1: No regulations). But then that is where their brain stopped. That is where it usually hurts to think further. Compete to what end? Who will be promoted in such a competition? Who will be rewarded? They fall on some ready-made common-sense answers (Reward: Cheaper Product), (Punishment: Starvation), etc..

So basically they offer a system that will result in cheap product *and* starvation. They say 'if you do not implement our system you will starve' but that is false. Starvation is not yours if you avoid free-markets. Starvation is yours if you join Free-markets and lose at the game. Competition in Free-markets will result in either cheap product through slavery, which is not cheap at all, or starvation.


Before any cries Strawman, I am allowed to take someone's exact assumptions, and logically drive them to a logically correct conclusion. It is only a strawman if I make up assumptions on your behalf or convert your *or* predicate into an *and* predictate.


Next time, ask the person facing you to slap their face 10 times, before they answer you with the sentence: "Competition of course, don't you know anything about free-markets?!"

This reminds me of the torture I've put myself through when I ask myself if you can really divide the world into two types of people, based on the many "There are two types of people in this world!" pronouncements.

If I had a gun to my head and was forced to make a simplistic division like that, I would have to say that "There are two types of people in this world!" -- people who are willing to push their brains and think hard, and people who are too lazy to do so. The latter, lazy-brained group, I suspect makes up the vast majority of the human population. They easily fall for simplistic solutions, which I think explains the popularity of libertarianism and many other things. It's why people fall for get-rich-quick schemes even though the only people who ever get rich quick are lottery winners, trust-fund babies, and extraordinarily lucky investors.

Yeah -- competition exists in every form of societal organization. The Soviets competed (and won!) on many fronts, from Olympic greatness to the space race. Yet simplistic libertarian doctrine would hold that these people should all become unproductive with the lack of profits to chase.

At the core of this dilemma is the fact that libertarians are, at heart, conservatives, and thus they are naturally disinclined to think things through as thoroughly as non-conservatives do (according to recent brain research on people from different political affiliations). They have a powerful emotional motive to seek out easy answers and an equally powerful aversion to considering real-world evidence that would muddy their "clarity."