Hurrah! I agree violently 
with the judgement that competition
is often (maybe very often) misplaced and misapplied. I tried to
teach my kids that 20 years ago. I'm still convinced that was the
right thing to do even though sometimes it seems to put them at a severe
disadvantage in dealing with the yuppies and other "me generation"
types.
(What's the metaphor for (no, that's not a stammer) using a keyboard
to "shoot from the lip"?
Ray Allis
[From Rick Marken (920620)]
One of the things that has particularly irritated me about
the current political dialog about values (the one going
on in the outside world -- not on CSGnet) is that the people
who are pushing "family values" most ardently are also the
people who have most ardently pushed one of the most fundemental
(and, I think, destructive) values of our (US) society -- the
value of CONFLICT (also called COMPETITION).
Every red-blooded American knows that competition is what makes
for successful economies. The basic idea (as pink-blooded little
me understands it) is that consumers are like judges at a
beauty contest (a uniquely American event itself). Producers
(or goods and services) compete to win the patronage of the
customers. This competition leads to better and better products
from producers (in the sense that they are the products that
best meet the customer's needs or wants).
This scenario has one little problem that only American's
with pink tainted blood might ever even deign to point out;
in competition like this there is generally a winner and
a loser. What happen's to the loser? America doesn't like
losers so we ignore them or blame the loss on personal
failings (not being a REAL MAN (or WOMAN)). Pinko types like
me, however, don't think that losers are just valueless trash;
they are worthwhile control systems, with intrinsic reference
signals of their own. I worry about the losers because societies
with lots of them around tend to be very precarious -- and have
to take strong measures to make sure that the losers don't try
to just take stuff from the winners.
I don't like the "value" attached to competition in this society.
I like the "value" of cooperation and community. I think society's emphasis on
the importance of "being # 1" or "fighting to get to the top" is
far worse than the lack of emphasis on "family values" and the
other bullshit being discussed in the media. But I doubt that Quayle
and Bush will come out im favor of the value of "cooperation" and
"community". Do I have bad standards? Is it wrong to dislike
competition and to like cooperation?
I will admit that competition (conflict) can accelerate the
development of technologies that might help the parties to
the conflict "win". Thus, two companies making widgits might
progress faster toward the goal of making the "best"
widget (the one that satisfies the market best) because they
are in conflict (they have to keep improving the widget
-- the output of each system-- or lose the conflict -- have
their market share of widgets become much lower than their
reference).
I think it is this "good" result of competition that has
impressed economists. But is this the only way to organize an
economy that produces that widgets that we all need to control
what we want to control? Must there be winners and losers
in order to have an economy that meets the requirements of
its members (the winners, anyway). Can't we organize a society
in which everybody is a winner (can control what they need and
want to control) -- and can't we do it without coersion (the
approach that communism used?). It seems to me that the economies
of some of the scandanavian and western european societies
approach a nice compromise between capitalistic individualism and
socialistic communalism. Why don't we learn from those economies?
Best regards
Rick
**************************************************************
Richard S. Marken USMail: 10459 Holman Ave
The Aerospace Corporation Los Angeles, CA 90024
E-mail: marken@aero.org
(310) 336-6214 (day)
(310) 474-0313 (evening)