Nature of Competition; Why Competition

 

There are two broad categories of reasons why we compete: push (yin) and pull (yang). By nature, first of all, we love competition. Otherwise, we would have never created competitive games, plays, contests, races and the like. Most of us are pulled by competition, while a few are fooled not only once but also “so many times.” Incidentally, “so many” means excessiveness according to the Confucian dictionary.

             The second reason of “push” is economic, a must as for subsistence and pleasures. Needless to say, economic rationale is of our main interest. Here again, there are push (-) and pull (+).

Unlimited desires. If our desires were limited, we would have been, continuously over and consistently across, living in the hunter-gather age far from belonging to or yearning for “leisure class.” Notably again, “consistently across” (L^-1) is to macroeconomics, what “continuously over” (T^-1) is to economics. 

            Indolence or wasting time is never and nowhere allowed from Here to Eternity. We quote again from J.S. Mill: 

It is only those in whom indolence amounts to a vice, that do not desire excitement after an interval of repose; it is only those in whom the need of excitement is a disease, that feel the tranquility which follows excitement dull and insipid, instead of pleasurable in direct proportion to the excitement preceding it. (Utilitarianism, 1861)

 

Most probably, he has Thomas Malthus (1836), Alvin Hansen and Larry Summers in mind.

             To be “intellectually honest,” we have unlimited wants, or needs and pleasures. Our needs for subsistence may or may not be limited. Anyway, we have successfully survived the subsistence era.

             Regarding unlimited desires, we have great teachers, good and bad. As always the bad news first: One is Scrooge in London and another is Ma Barker. We are more than well aware of the former. According to Boney M, the latter (Boney M. - Ma Baker) is like this:

Freeze I'm ma Baker

Put your hands in the air and give me all your money

This is the story of ma Baker the meanest cat from old Chicago town

……..

She taught her four sons

To handle their guns

            

             Now, the good news: Look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet among other trillionaries in the Giving Pledge club. They have endless desire to do something, at least, in terms of sense of achievement and spirit of humanity.

             See, I told you so: human desires are unlimited. 

Limited resources. Here are two great categories, providential and natural. First we have defined time in Here and confined physical capacity of body in our self. With “us” as Labor given, the time is the currency, or the most fundamental means to obtaining what we want.

             Naturally, the space we can utilize is limited while and where we do something. Further on, the Mother Nature looks benevolent, but not exactly so. She allows all kinds of resources but only so much and that only to the entitled. The entitled use the Nature as land and then turn extracted resources into the asset, sometime misnamed as “physical Kapital.”

             To name correctly, Labor is the human asset while Nature and physical Kapital are the physical asset. The asset must join forces with the currency of hours before becoming a creative, destructive or creative-destructive power.

             All in all, we have limitation to creative power as to either the product for the current period or the asset for the future periods. For better and for worse, Present and Future compete against each other.

            

He……re's Competition!