Good and Bad Competition

     I have noticed the term "social Darwinism" popping up in
the news.  Social Darwinists claim that in free competition the
most capable will out produce the less capable causing the less
capable to parish.  The social Darwinists fail to distinguish
between the two types of competition.

     Competition can be either productive or destructive. 
Destructive competition is worse than a zero sum game.  When
competitors destroy the wealth of the other competitors, on
average everyone ends up with less then they started with.

     Total war is the extreme example of destructive
competition.  Any competition to take from others is destructive. 
The victims end up with less.  The "winners" gain less than the
victims lose.  The cost of taking the loot consumes part of the
loot, often most of it.

     The US government welfare system consumes over 70
percent of the wealth taken to aid the poor.  In other words, the
welfare system provides more than twice as much in benefits to
those who run it as it provides to the poor.

     Government is the realm of destructive competition. 
Uncountable special interests use government to destructively
compete for wealth produced by others.

     As this competition increases, it drains effort from
production.  The competitors for what is produced by others
inevitably end up competing for an ever decreasing pool of
wealth.  In the end the weak will inevitably parish.

     Productive competition is a horse of a different color.  In
an environment of liberty, individuals compete to out produce
each other.  Some may try to out produce everyone else.  Others
may compete mainly with themselves.  Primarily they seek to be
more productive than they were.  They don't worry about how
productive others may be.

     The more we produce for others, the more others will
give us in exchange.  This motivates us to compete to increase
what we produce for others.  Yes, this is totally selfish.  Who
should care when everyone benefits?  Failure to recognize how
we all benefit from the selfishness of others often leads
individuals to act against their own best interests.

     Even those who fail to increase their productivity are no
worse off than before.  They may be relatively worse off when
compared to others.  In absolute terns they haven't lost a thing. 
The farmer whose corn production is stuck at 100 bushels per
acre doesn't have less corn merely because another farmer
increases his yield to 150 bushels.

     When the more successful producers invest their
increased productivity in facilities that increase the productivity
of others, those others are better off, rather than worse off. 
Productive competition doesn't drive anyone to extinction.  It can
only aid the survival of all.

     There is another point worth noticing.  When the more
successful producers increase their productivity, they have more
that they can, and often do, donate to aid the less successful
producers.

     For most of history, competition was more destructive
than productive.  A few rulers and slave masters grew wealthy
by forcibly taking from others.  Competing tribes battled to take
from each other.  In this world of destructive, government style
competition, life was cruel, brutish and short.

     The industrial revolution, which still continues, is
powered by productive competition.  Competing to increase our
productivity and service to each other has lifted us to by far the
highest productivity and standard of living in the history of the
human race.  Out producing your neighbor doesn't beggar your
neighbor.  It benefits him.

     The total insanity of social Darwinism is that its
advocates seek to replace the productive competition of free
people with destructive, government based, competition among
special interests.  It is the social Darwinists that have embarked
on a course of action that threatens the survival of the least
successful producers, and everyone else.

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Copyright 2013
Albert D. McCallum