Arguments against competition

[leftpowe]

Competition is good is the current motto, are there any arguments that challenge this motto?

[Trystan]

Competition is actually being eroded away.

[Pogue]

The businesses will create monopolies by agreeing on auniform price or becoming one company which will then dictate the prices. This is being seen in the UK with the 6 large energy companies all setting the same price. Some suspect this is some backroom agreement between they all have, others say its just them using business 'logic'.

[Drace]

This competition leads to a consumerist society as they try and do all they can to sell their products.

The effects are a retarded anti-intellectual society :)
He'z a good link on that:
http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_culture.htm

Also, this consumerist society leads to a waste of resources on total crap no one really needs, but they buy it anyway because its 'attractive'. We were all fine with the normal Ipods. Who said "Oh I wish my Ipod would let me go on the internet and watch youtube videos and hold a gazillion songs!. So this competition actually drives us buying things we really don't need!

Wow waitup, I already made a post on this...sec.


This is intended to be an argument against how the free market creates efficiency because of competition. I use the term technology to refer the crap they sell us. Sorry, I don't know a better term for it.

Even if technology made an individual be able to do 10 hour of work in an hour, its no achievement. Just the eventual average basic standard of living.

Industries create change when we don't request them. Thats the free market. People's wants for a profit creates products we don't need :-$.
The advancement in technology, is too rapid.

Oh and lets not totally blame it on the industries, were the ones who buy the things they sell although they are designed too be attractive.

We were all fine with the original Ipod, but since the original stopped selling, they had to make a better one so people would buy again. And Dammit, I myself got the Touch.
The only thing that makes us uncomfortable with the cheap $20 Mp3s is that we would feel bad seeing others with the expensive ones. Its all lies.


50 years ago our expectations were way less. We could have fun playing outside, be it tag or cards. Now since we need technology to have fun or going to the marketplace or the movies with friends.
The problem is... We have to pay for these things!
None of us can afford an unlimited supply of these.
And we need an unlimited supply because even a $300 Ipod gets boring in the first 20 minutes? LOL

This shit is pointless and have no value other then negative ones. Waste of natural resources.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Competition over what, exactly? Competition isn't necessarily unhealthy. Inventors compete all the time; video game designers compete. Two firms competing isn't necessarily bad - most of the time.

Competing over resources and land is absurd. Earth's produce aren't here to be used exclusively.

"Advancement of industries is too rapid..." You're kidding, right? It's not fast enough.

[Black Sheep]

Species are more benefited by mutual aid than by competition.
Thus said Darwin

[Drace]

"Advancement of industries is too rapid..." You're kidding, right? It's not fast enough.

Wow wow.
Where'd that get in there, lol. Wrong wording. I'm just talking about the consumer based products.

Oh and I also missed this part:


I suppose we can continue advancing in technology such as medicine, satellites and such, but is I not the free market that gives us these things? The competition of the free market creates change we don't want. As of a commune, I'm guessing what would happen is, when people see a problem with something, they can request change.

Also, with the money that goes into the capitalist's pocket, can we not create greater efficiency then what competition does? Well all competition does at most times is create unnecessary products.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Species are more benefited by mutual aid than by competition.
Thus said Darwin

True. On a large scale, cooperation is the only solution. After all, war is the worst type of competition. And any society that glorifies in competition too much will render itself with petty desires, but competition isn't always bad.

One problem with markets in general is that a lot of labor and resources are wasted erroneously to pursue profits. Marketing jobs, for example.

[GPDP]

Also, don't forget externalities.

[Kukulofori]

The argument shouldn't give in to their fear of not having any competition, but instead on how much competition there would be if everyone had the resources to make their ideas a reality.

[RebelDog]

GeneCosta:

Competition isn't necessarily unhealthy. Inventors compete all the time; video game designers compete.

It all depends in which economic system these 'inventors' are 'competing'. If it is in the capitalist system then the powerful inventors have far greater advantages over the unknown inventor with no money to manufacture or market the invention. This process actually limits and slows down the development of good ideas because it favors the powerful inventor and not necessarily the best inventions. However if the inventors are working within a different structure where competition is eliminated and information and innovation are freely available to be considered or used by self-managed, democratic producing units, it is my opinion this would make the alternative economy more dynamic than the one with competition could ever hope to be. Also involving the producers in the process of innovation and invention as part of their job complex could release massive creative potential for society.


Two firms competing isn't necessarily bad - most of the time.


It might be good for the share-holders of the company that gains the greatest market share, outside of that I don't see how this is good for everyone else. Competition, markets, corporations etc should all have to show they cannot be supplanted by socially superior and desirable institutions and they fail miserably with even the most simple scrutiny.

[Drace]

It is important to note that competition only takes place between capitalists, and not workers.
So the result of competition does not provide a greater production, just different things.

My whole argument against this is that, these new things are of no use. They are at most times simply just 'attractive' items but quite useless. They do not create efficiency and when they do, it becomes every day life.

Also, should the incentive for new things be that of which the people want? Of course no business would last without consumerism, but let us know that businesses are what create consumerism. Basically, creating 'attractive' things of which one's senses catches, but not their brains. Heres a good article on the effects of this:

http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/capitalism_culture.htm

So, when people see a need of something new, it will be implanted. If there is something that will improve their living, they can suggest it, and if it is truly a lovely thing, it should be taken into production.

Also, by having no competition and no need for expansion, things can be organized to be put of good use.
So if theres a hungry boy we can feed him with the money that would have gone to the capitalist's pocket.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

It all depends in which economic system these 'inventors' are 'competing'. If it is in the capitalist system then the powerful inventors have far greater advantages over the unknown inventor with no money to manufacture or market the invention. This process actually limits and slows down the development of good ideas because it favors the powerful inventor and not necessarily the best inventions. However if the inventors are working within a different structure where competition is eliminated and information and innovation are freely available to be considered or used by self-managed, democratic producing units, it is my opinion this would make the alternative economy more dynamic than the one with competition could ever hope to be. Also involving the producers in the process of innovation and invention as part of their job complex could release massive creative potential for society.

Oh, of course. I'm just stating that we should not attack "competition," necessarily. A system built around competition, definitely. But competition is healthy if it's not forced.

[Vanguard1917]

I really like Trotsky's explanation of how competition will work in socialist society:

The powerful force of competition which, in bourgeois society, has the character of market competition, will not disappear in a Socialist society, but, to use the language of psycho-analysis, will be sublimated, that is, will assume a higher and more fertile form. There will be the struggle for one’s opinion, for one’s project, for one’s taste. In the measure in which political struggles will be eliminated – and in a society where there will be no classes, there will be no such struggles – the liberated passions will be channelized into technique, into construction...

All forms of life, Such as the cultivation of land, the planning of human habitations, the building of theaters, the methods of socially educating children, the solution of scientific problems, the creation of new styles, will vitally engross all and everybody. People will divide into “parties” over the question of a new gigantic canal, or the distribution of oases in the Sahara (such a question will exist too), over the regulation of the weather and the climate, over a new theater, over chemical hypotheses, over two competing tendencies in music, and over a best system of sports. Such parties will not be poisoned by the greed of class or caste. All will be equally interested in the success of the whole. The struggle will have a purely ideologic character. It will have no running after profits, it will have nothing mean, no betrayals, no bribery, none of the things that form the soul of “competition” in a society divided into classes. But this will in no way hinder the struggle from being absorbing, dramatic and passionate.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/ch08.htm

[cenv]

Competition is good is the current motto, are there any arguments that challenge this motto?
Competition (in an economic context) leads to a fragmented society in which people are working against each other. Bourgeois ideology tells us that this leads to increased productivity, but the reality is that competition encourages a counterproductive atmosphere in which belittling one's opponents is as important as progress. Competition implies a winner and a loser. And we aren't talking about winners and losers in a game here -- we're talking about real lives. Some people win, but millions of people also lose.

When you try to base an entire social structure on competition, competition becomes the antithesis of progress. If one group of people moves forward, another group moves backwards, and society as a whole stays in the same place. If everyone grows up learning to work against everyone else, society never moves forward because it is not a cohesive unit.

The result is that big problems arise, but no one bothers to clean them up because the idea of collectivism and cooperation is anathema to a society based on competition and hard core individualism.

[Vanguard1917]

When you try to base an entire social structure on competition, competition becomes the antithesis of progress. If one group of people moves forward, another group moves backwards, and society as a whole stays in the same place. If everyone grows up learning to work against everyone else, society never moves forward because it is not a cohesive unit.

This isn't caused by competitiveness as such, but by the dynamics of a class-divided society. In a society free from classes and class antagonisms, with the principle cause of social conflict gone, competition will be of a different nature. There will be competition over ideas, viewpoints, etc., as a way of deciding how to best move society forward.

[RebelDog]

Oh, of course. I'm just stating that we should not attack "competition," necessarily. A system built around competition, definitely. But competition is healthy if it's not forced.




Could you provide some examples of how economic competition can be healthy? I cannot see how it can be held up as healthy, but that of course depends on whose health were are talking about here.

[Valeofruin]

The need to remain competitive is in fact the cancer killing the bourgeois. It is a feature of bourgeois capitalism that will ultimately lead to its demise.

[cenv]

This isn't caused by competitiveness as such, but by the dynamics of a class-divided society. In a society free from classes and class antagonisms, with the principle cause of social conflict gone, competition will be of a different nature. There will be competition over ideas, viewpoints, etc., as a way of deciding how to best move society forward.
You're talking about competition within the context of a society based on cooperation. If you eliminate classes without eliminating free market-style competition, your new classless society will disintegrate back into class society. In concrete terms, getting rid of classes implies getting rid of bourgeois competition (and many other things).

I do agree that you could look at this as fundamentally changing the nature of competition instead of eliminating competition.