5 ms·

Since "socio-economically comfortable" is relative (some people are socio-economically comfortable with much less than other people) I'd argue it does not go be

• jjoonathan 5y ago
  Competition kills generosity.
  • fullshark 5y ago
    Competition also makes the world go round
    • necovek 5y ago
      Nope, it's gravity. And cooperation. Humans have risen above other species because of their cooperative approach (eg. sharing knowledge by passing it through language, forming communities with broader goals to protect the entire group, etc). This is pretty evident in all the stories of those children raised by animals in the wild: none of them develop much past their animal caretakers.
      • whirlwin 5y ago
        You could say the competition lies in maintaining and creating new relationships, in order to be able to cooperate well
      • Jensson 5y ago
        But competition is how we get out of local maxima, disruptive improvements needs competition, they don't happen through cooperation. For example, lets say you have a better way to make pots. You show it to people, but nobody listens, they think that their way of making pots is better. How do you actually help them get benefit from your discovery? Well, you set up a competition, so it can be clear to everyone which way is best. Then you beat the old way of making pots, they have to admit that they were wrong and now everyone benefits (except the old pot makers who now has to relearn their things and lose their status as masters).
        • wahern 5y ago
          Competition in the natural world is typically zero sum. In the human world cooperation and competition aren't mutually exclusive, and in fact we tend to build societies that leverage competition for mutual gain--i.e. cooperative competition. In any event, I think the point is that [altruistic, non-kin, systemic] cooperation is the distinguishing characteristic of the human species, not that it's the only dynamic at play or even the one that predominates across all discrete social interactions.
          • necovek 5y ago
            Very nicely put, that was exactly my point.
          • trashtester 5y ago
            > Competition in the natural world is typically zero sum. Evolution itself can be seen as a positive sum. Without it, even single-celled organisms would not exist. Evolution, through natural selection, can be seen as driven by competion between pieces of information (genes), much more than it is competition between individuals. (all individuals die eventually, so for them the game may be zero sum). Similarily, competition within human culture also produce positive (or in some cases negative) sum effects that need to be closely tied to individuals, but more often to memes/ideas (and sometimes, still, genes). When Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, he did benefit personally (some of the profit was spent on introducing a minimum wage and 5 day work week), but soon, competition would force everyone to use the same idea. Depending on your point of view, this can be seen as positive sum (increased productivity, less work) or negative (fewer and more boring jobs in manufacturing).
        • jjoonathan 5y ago
          > competition is how we get out of local maxima Careful. The prisoner's dilemma shows us that competition can drive the system to the globally worst outcome.
      • inglor_cz 5y ago
        Competition and cooperation aren't polar opposites, though. Mutually cooperating teams / tribes / nations / organizations often find themselves in competition with other mutually cooperating teams / tribes etc. Competition is definitely a huge incentive to innovate, though it also may lead you astray. An extreme version of competition is ... war. And right now we see the dynamic develop: dozens of NATO and NATO-adjacent countries cooperate with one another and with Ukraine so that Ukraine may "compete" on the battlefield with a stronger neighbour, Russia. Cooperation and competition by proxy. Russia tries to counter that by building its own cooperation team, but finds almost no significant volunteers to team with, except Belarus.
        • goodpoint 5y ago
          > Competition is definitely a huge incentive to innovate Citation needed.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • User23 5y ago
    Competition and generosity are unrelated. Many cultures in fact have competitions in which status is gained by being more generous. Perhaps the most iconic is the potlatch[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch
  • slim 5y ago
    Generosity kills competition