Just because a rank exist doesn't mean a competition exists. I might rank people on the street by height, but they're not competing with each other. In the cont

Just because a rank exist doesn't mean a competition exists. I might rank people on the street by height, but they're not competing with each other. In the context of the article, a rank is a measurement that the observer takes, it's not necessarily a motivator for the behaviour of the people he's observing (although in some cases it might be).