No Contest (14 page)

The second definition rests economic theory on a very questionable (but rarely questioned) assumption about “human nature”—namely, the belief that we will always want more of something than we had before or more than the next person has. Far more reasonable is the proposition that insatiability and competitiveness reflect cultural mores. As Wachtel saw, “Our obsession with growth is the expression of neither inexorable laws of human nature nor inexorable laws of economics. . . . It is a cultural and psychological phenomenon, reflecting our present way of organizing and giving meaning to our lives . . . [that] is now maladaptive.”
⁹⁷

This position defines scarcity as a matter of psychological state (perception or desire) rather than objective fact. Some social critics have gone along with this approach but have shown that this state, which is often used to justify competition, actually is a
product
of competition. Specifically, it is argued, capitalism manufactures scarcity.
⁹⁸
Capitalism's driving force is the quest for profits; its alleged success at satisfying human needs is merely a fortuitous by-product. This goal requires the continuous—indeed, constantly expanding—consumption of goods, and these goods will be purchased only if they are desired. The advertising industry exists to create this desire, to produce a continual dissatisfaction with what we currently have and to tell us of the fulfillment that purchasing yet another product will bring.
^*
We must be “educated” as to the desirability of low-calorie TV dinners, cordless telephones, and this year's model of video recorders. The sociologist Philip Slater has written lucidly on this topic, and he is worth quoting at length:

 

Scarcity is spurious. . . . It now exists only for the purpose of maintaining the system that depends upon it, and its artificiality becomes more palpable each day. . . . Inequality, originally a consequence of scarcity, is now a means of creating artificial scarcities. For in the old culture [the dominant disposition of American life], as we have seen, the manufacture of scarcity is the principal activity. Hostile comments of old-culture adherents toward new-culture forms (“people won't want to work if they can get things for nothing,” “people won't want to get married if they can get it free”) often reveal this preoccupation. Scarcity, the presumably undesired but unavoidable foundation for the whole old-culture edifice, has now become its most treasured and sacred value, and to maintain this value in the midst of plenty it has been necessary to establish invidiousness as the foremost criterion of worth. Old-culture Americans . . . find it difficult to enjoy anything they themselves have unless they can be sure that there are people to whom this pleasure is denied. . . . Since the society rests on scarcity assumptions, involvement in it has always meant competitive involvement.”
⁹⁹

 

A competitive economic system offers itself as the best way to deal with scarcity (here defined as the inability of consumers to get enough) while quietly
promoting
scarcity. The result is the perpetuation of the system and, not incidentally, the encouragement of intentional competition. Capitalism works on the same principle as a glass company whose employees spend their nights breaking people's windows and their days boasting of the public service they provide.

Manufactured scarcity, of course, is not limited to economic matters. Every contest that is staged (the most facts memorized, the fastest runner, the most beautiful) involves the creation of a desired and scarce status where none existed before. Social psychologist Emmy Pepitone emphasizes the artificiality of this status:

 

There seem to be exceedingly few essential objects that are so unique that they can be possessed only by one person. In the state of nature, most objects come in a form that can be shared by a large number of people. . . . Uniqueness seems to be invented by humans, who invent activities deliberately designed to allow entry into the goal region to one individual only.
¹⁰⁰

 

This process can occur even without formal contests. Charles Derber, for example, has described at some length the competition for attention in a conversation. “While attention is not intrinsically ‘scarce,'” he argues, “it tends to become so under . . . individualistic conditions of allocation and distribution.”
¹⁰¹
To ask whom I listen to or care for the most is to turn attention or love into a finite commodity.

To return to economics, neither a specialized nor a commonsense definition of scarcity leads us to accept competition as the most rational or appropriate system. If we view scarcity as a function of expanding human desire, this situation is largely created by the very system recommended to us as its solution. If we view scarcity as a situation of objective insufficiency, then the real problem turns out to be one of distribution—something that competition is more likely to exacerbate than remedy. In any case, the assumption that a competitive economic system is productive presupposes that competition stimulates optimal performance—something we now know to be false.

***

If any benefits can still be claimed for economic competition, they must be weighed—as any economist should insist on principle—against the disadvantages. The psychological and interpersonal costs of competition, per se, will be discussed in later chapters, but there are some unique problems with competition in the economic sphere that should be sketched here. I have already suggested that competition may contribute to an inequitable distribution of resources. But there is also the matter of its failure with respect to the standards favored by economists: competition may be unsuccessful even on its own terms.

In 1940, Lawrence Frank listed some of the costs of economic competition. He included business failures, copious litigation, idle equipment, a reduction in quality, unsafe working conditions, and the need to regulate the private sector in order to keep all of these problems under control.
¹⁰²
These problems were experienced most dramatically in the laissez-faire economy of the last century, which, according to economist John Culbertson, “performed badly, provoking general demands for reform and regulation. The country's ‘production miracle' occurred in the Second World War, under the wartime economic controls.”
¹⁰³

When regulation is cut back in order to bring more competition 10 the marketplace, we again witness the true consequences of this competition: its advantages often prove illusory or short-lived or selective. A few examples:

•    The recent deregulation of the airline industry, has, it is true, led to lower fares on busy routes (e.g., New York to Los Angeles), but service to less heavily traveled cities is either much more expensive or no longer available.
¹⁰⁴
Precisely the same thing happened when bus companies were able to compete without regulation: they “cut out less-profitable routes, and the cheap service that the young, the elderly and the poor have historically depended on [was] less available.”
¹⁰⁵

•    Increased competition for large depositors has led banks to offer high-interest accounts. But how do banks pay for this? They have either had to make riskier, high-interest loans or jack up fees and minimum requirements on small accounts, thus penalizing poorer people.

•    Is it advantageous to have book publishers compete for the rights to publish a desirable manuscript? The author may receive extravagant sums, but this often means that there is less money for other authors (whose names cannot guarantee enormous sales); arguably, the reading public loses, too.

•    States compete fiercely for business investment by lowering their taxes. The corporations benefit, but citizens lose critical services when the tax base declines.

Examples of this sort are limited only by the varieties of economic competition. I am intentionally calling attention to cases where it is competition itself—rather than unfair competition—that is involved. A fierce price war between two giant conglomerates often has the effect of driving small businesses out of the market, and even apologists of capitalism usually acknowledge this is not desirable. I would contend that this is the rule rather than the exception in our economic system—as rapid concentration in virtually all sectors demonstrates—and I would also argue (though I will not follow through here) that such unfairness inevitably develops as a result of competition itself.

This aside, competition is of questionable value. The watchword of classical economics, that competition keeps prices down, is far from obvious. When economists are presented with counterexamples, they sometimes respond by saying that the higher price (for, say, an airline ticket) is perfectly appropriate since this is its “natural” price. But in what sense is it natural? In that the market (i.e., a competitive system) decrees it. Since the value of the competitive system is precisely what is at issue, it begs the question to say that anything resulting from the system is
ipso facto
justified. We need to ask whether it is really true that competition is the most efficient arrangement across the board. A comprehensive investigation is beyond the scope of this book and my competence, but these few remarks may at least open this dogma to question.

Beyond the matter of prices, let us ask what ef fect competition has on quality. Even if the race for profits results in a higher speed of production and greater volume, this may well come at the expense of quality. Norman Lear, for example, insists that the dreadful mediocrity of television programming is a direct result of competition among the networks.
¹⁰⁶
Earlier I noted that trying to be number one and trying to do a task well are two different things; here we may observe the relevance of this distinction to economics. “The aim of competition often becomes one of winning the market rather than producing a better product,” argues Arthur W. Combs. “Competition seeks to prove superiority, even if it does not exist. It places the emphasis upon capturing the buyer rather than producing a better product.”
¹⁰⁷
It is exactly in this vein that Sinclair Lewis has Babbitt hear a confession from his friend in the roofing business: “‘You know, my business isn't distributing roofing—it's principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other's throats and make the public pay for it!'”
¹⁰⁸
Similar examples can be found in virtually any competitive sector.

Competition may reduce not only quality but safety. With airplanes, as with most products, “the best design from an economic standpoint is the worst thing for safety”;
¹⁰⁹
the more ferocious the competition among manufacturers, the less consideration we can expect that safety will receive. “While no manufacturer would build an unsafe aircraft intentionally,” argues Frederick C. Thayer, “competitive pressures can affect judgments. . . . The race to ‘keep up' may have introduced hidden dangers.”
¹¹⁰
What is true of the shoddily assembled DC-10 is true of the dangerous drug that a pharmaceutical firm has marketed hastily in order to beat its rivals or of the wastes spewed out by a business that feared installing pollution control equipment would cause it to lose its competitive edge.

Let us not overlook, finally, the noneconomic costs of economic competition, which have been said to include a loss of community and sociability,
¹¹¹
a heightening of selfishness,
¹¹²
and such other consequences as anxiety, hostility, obsessional thinking, and the suppression of individuality.
¹¹³
In all, we may conclude from this admittedly incomplete discussion that economic competition of any kind may be a more dubious proposition than is generally assumed. This, let me emphasize again, is not to suggest that criticism of
unfair
competition is misplaced or that all kinds of economic competition are equally harmful. (The typical competition among workers for jobs and the atypical competition among employers for workers are hardly equivalent, and neither are competition between a small family business and a giant corporation, on the one hand, and between two family businesses, on the other.)

Let me also acknowledge that this discussion, intended to raise questions about the fundamental bases of our current economic system, does not include a consideration of alternatives. It may well be that a centralized economy—even one based on group-interest rather than self-interest principles—cannot function without some kind of competition. But this should lead us to investigate decentralized possibilities—small-scale cooperatives, for example—rather than to shrug our shoulders and accept the inevitability of competition. There is good evidence that various cooperative models in the workplace are considerably more productive than competitive businesses.
¹¹⁴
This search for noncompetitive alternatives will be informed not only by this consideration of productiveness in the economic realm but by all the research reviewed in this chapter—research that challenges the myth of competition's contribution to achievement.

4

ON SPORTS, PLAY, AND FUN

 

That ain't no way to have fun, son.

—Randy Newman

 

From the sober issues of individual achievement and economic productivity, we now turn, quite literally, to fun and games. Even if competition cannot be defended on the basis of its contribution to performance, proponents may insist that certain competitive encounters are enjoyable. Relatively few people profess to enjoy the frantic scramble for position, prestige, and profit that occurs in the workplace; the reference here is almost always to recreational pursuits. The defense of competition has shifted, so to speak, to the weekend.