3 ms·

There's nothing illogical about it. You put pure competition at the foundation of the whole society, well then pure competition permeates everything. The more c

There's nothing illogical about it. You put pure competition at the foundation of the whole society, well then pure competition permeates everything. The more competitive you are, the better you're blending in. Of course, there's the little nagging fact that the whole system might be orthogonal to stuff such as happiness, or enjoying life.

lqdc13 10y ago
For some people happiness only comes from competition. Having said that, competition at work is not great because it leads to worst possible result for workers and best possible result for employers.
- Florin_Andrei 10y ago
  It's pretty obvious: don't absolutize anything. Pure competition is not the answer to everything. Pure collaboration isn't either. And neither is pure free market, nor pure dictatorship. The secret sauce must be a blend of many different ingredients. The main thing is finding the right proportions.
aeorgnoieang 10y ago
I'm not sure I live on the same planet, or even the same universe as you. On my planet most people have an incredibly strong anti-market bias and lots of people strongly and loudly deride competition. Nor is "pure competition" (whatever that is) at the foundation "of the whole society". Instead, the various societies in my world vary to the degree that they believe that competition, particularly economic competition, is important. But very few of them consist of even a large fraction of people that think competition should 'permeate everything'. Nor are there any societies in which a small number of elites have managed to permeate everything with competitiveness. There is however a form of competition that does permeate everything. I refer of course to competition for (relative) status. But still, characterizing it as 'permeating everything' is just hyperbole. It is pervasive and sometimes (if not often) pernicious, but in fact, in my universe at least, most of the world has improved remarkably in a short span of recent time and any even-more-recent backsliding is pretty close to insignificant in comparison to the slightly less recent improvements.

lqdc13 10y ago

For some people happiness only comes from competition. Having said that, competition at work is not great because it leads to worst possible result for workers and best possible result for employers.

Florin_Andrei 10y ago
It's pretty obvious: don't absolutize anything. Pure competition is not the answer to everything. Pure collaboration isn't either. And neither is pure free market, nor pure dictatorship. The secret sauce must be a blend of many different ingredients. The main thing is finding the right proportions.

aeorgnoieang 10y ago

I'm not sure I live on the same planet, or even the same universe as you. On my planet most people have an incredibly strong anti-market bias and lots of people strongly and loudly deride competition. Nor is "pure competition" (whatever that is) at the foundation "of the whole society". Instead, the various societies in my world vary to the degree that they believe that competition, particularly economic competition, is important. But very few of them consist of even a large fraction of people that think competition should 'permeate everything'. Nor are there any societies in which a small number of elites have managed to permeate everything with competitiveness. There is however a form of competition that does permeate everything. I refer of course to competition for (relative) status. But still, characterizing it as 'permeating everything' is just hyperbole. It is pervasive and sometimes (if not often) pernicious, but in fact, in my universe at least, most of the world has improved remarkably in a short span of recent time and any even-more-recent backsliding is pretty close to insignificant in comparison to the slightly less recent improvements.