Yes, yes, I agree fully. The problem is that the philistines can't motivate themselves to do anything without a competitive frame. They just fall into pointles

Yes, yes, I agree fully. The problem is that the philistines can't motivate themselves to do anything without a competitive frame. They just fall into pointless favor-trading and rent-seeking. They see creation for its own sake as self-indulgent, manic, pointless, or (gasp!) effeminate. The result is that motivations like "build cool shit" or "help people" are cast as reckless and irresponsible, vision goes away, and reliable mediocrity becomes the new game of the day. With competing to excel rendered impossible, people compete instead to suffer in pointless social competitions that have a flavor of reality TV. There's this negative stereotype that engineers "don't want to concern themselves with the business", and that they'd rather shut themselves away in an ivory tower and build "cool" stuff that no one cares about. That's not true at all! However, they refuse (often passively, because to be active in it leads to professional adversity) to subordinate themselves to the business, especially when the business seems to have no vision, no real purpose for existing, and a cost-cutting mentality that squashes excellence. Often, the only way to get the MBA-culture philistines to do the right thing (and let the creative geniuses shine) is to create a sense of competition and existential crisis. "We have to crush Facebook before they crush us. We need this autonomy for our best people." Meanwhile, Facebook doesn't give a damn about "crushing" anyone. The problem is that the people who are the best at creating a sense of existential crisis are the ones who excel at artificial scarcity and its theater-- psychopaths. The long-term consequences of this competitive mentality (often the only alternative to executive, rent-seeking complacency) are horrible. I'd love to see the excellence mentality become more common. You're starting to see it in open allocation cultures like Valve. We need a million times more of that because, you're right, OP, we're not in competition. We're just trying to fucking live well. No one has to lose.