Competition vs. Collaboration (improving, points, purpose, humans)

[thetester1]

Is the competitive environment really the best for advancement of society? In less developed areas of the world, more fighting between individuals and/or groups occurs than in more developed areas of the world - this has occurred because people in these developed areas use teamwork (in the form of companies, government, etc.) to advance society. Taking this, isn't the next logical step for companies, governments etc. to work as one instead of compete (capitalism, wars) against each other? When people are on the same page and collaborate, things get done better and more efficiently. Complete transparency seems to be inevitable, why continue to compete when history has shown that collaboration is better?

[Thoreau424]

Some think that America is only to promote competition, and that collaboration is a dirty word. Others more intelligent and healthy see that both have a place, and both are necessary. But don't count on people waking up though to that reality; certainly not in today's toxic environment.

[ukrkoz]

And toxic environment became such how? Not due to obsessive ill understood competition, by any chance?

I'll quote very intelligent academician, Mr Fursov. He said: in 18th century Anglo-Saxons convinced humanity that being rich is the highest moral virtue.
Sapientis sat.

[ciceropolo]

My random thoughts...

Originally Posted by thetester1

Is the competitive environment really the best for advancement of society?


It depends on whether there is an agreed upon accepted standard of "rules", along with uniform unilateral application to those breaking them for competitive engagement. When there are negative repercussions for those not abiding by the agreed upon rules and the goal of competition is improving the lot of mankind with a dose of personal gain (subject to the individuals values) yes, a competitive environment does the most good.


Often times the biggest problem in a competitive environment is that within a capitalist economic system, power tends to coalesce at every realm within respective systems, and what is best for mankind seems to have become secondary to what provides the individual or corporate entity (more often) the best immediate gains as measured by marginal unit profit / transaction (whatever form of monetization: political equity, bribes, kickbacks) etc...


In less developed areas of the world, more fighting between individuals and/or groups occurs than in more developed areas of the world - this has occurred because people in these developed areas use teamwork (in the form of companies, government, etc.) to advance society.


That depends on the presumption that the individual / groups / corporate entity has advancing society as its first priority or, rather, does it only adjust when the monetary generating behavior diminishes (market saturation). The whole 'corporate responsibility' mantra seems more a catch phrase coined by public / community affairs and marketing types.


There are some good examples: Elon Musk's endeavors seem genuine but many of the old line and tech corporate industries are fraught with internal business model conflicts.


Look at how the internet has gotten worse for the end consumer user with constant clutter of ads / spam (yes I know of adblock). All the players (infrastructure / server host / ISP / browser etc...) benefit from the extra 'activity' to different degrees of metric success: Usage, volume, (click through) etc... Imagine how much better the end user experience would be if those creating fraudulent traffic or whose efforts at demand creation bog down the 'highway' with speed bumps, detours (click bait), construction barrels, road signs (popups) etc... were eliminated or streamlined out of the equation?



Also, in less developed areas of the world there tends to be different values / standards / levels of education and thus more exploitation (even though some of these areas have valuable economic resources!) and coercion by their home 'rulers' and overseers as they do not have true transparency.


Another issue is what resources are of most value at different points in history and where necessary resources for life are scarce, whereas, 'developed' areas levels of economic commercial activity bring reductions in necessary resources to the peoples living within a geography (higher quality of life/ standards of living).





Taking this, isn't the next logical step for companies, governments etc. to work as one instead of compete (capitalism, wars) against each other? When people are on the same page and collaborate, things get done better and more efficiently.


"When people are on the same page and collaborate" is the operate phrase which causes all manner of issues. It implies a need for a level of agreed upon common standards / values on a philosophical approach level.

It gets to the old Collectivist vs. Individualist spectrum of views within a structured society.

Many economics studies of collectivist type of social economic structures don't seem to hold up. (Human Nature?) I think there needs to be a balance (i.e. the corporate responsibility concept or compassionate conservatism that factors social conditions without reinforcing / rewarding bad behaviors - but that the Individual needs to have superior rights to the state under most circumstances for it to do best.




Complete transparency seems to be inevitable, why continue to compete when history has shown that collaboration is better?

Transparency is a good thing but highly fractured and controlled as to what activities are 'transparent' to all. For example, many governments / states claim exemption from 'transparency' but want their 'subjects' to be under the transparent microscope more and more. If we can get to a status of demanding the elimination of double standards that would help tremendously.


Collaboration is indeed better. The key thing here is true freedom to communicate and share ideas amongst a diverse populace..


Another slant to examine is the following thought experiment. How much would mankind innovate if the innovator could not gain from the innovation and in what form(s) of gain do different peoples value more?

What type of society and social values construct would be necessary to enable and foster innovation in the absence of monetary gain? And would it provide an overall more optimized outcome that enables individuals to attain higher levels of self awareness, knowledge, fulfillment etc...


When the focus is having more stuff to consume it obviates the full scope of human fulfillment (IMO) and does a disservice to advancing humankind. So you end up with the extremes we are finding more and more between the have and have-nots with little to no real concern for fellow humankind other than to be farmed like cattle by those in positions of power and control over the predominant economic, political and socializing apparatus of the times within which we live.

[thetester1]

"When people are on the same page and collaborate" is the operate phrase which causes all manner of issues. It implies a need for a level of agreed upon common standards / values on a philosophical approach level.

Yes, borrowing from Nietzsche, we need to abandon the master-slave type approach and become an ubermensch society ("All human life would be given meaning by how it advanced a new generation of human beings" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cbermensch#As_a_goal). This would be an unstoppable force and the only thing preventing it is our petty arguments over money, girls, land, materials, etc.


Transparency is a good thing but highly fractured and controlled as to what activities are 'transparent' to all. For example, many governments / states claim exemption from 'transparency' but want their 'subjects' to be under the transparent microscope more and more. If we can get to a status of demanding the elimination of double standards that would help tremendously.

I would say that no one would be able to be exempt from transparency. "Everyone sees everyone" and there is no double standard, only one, that of a society that agrees transparency is crucial to advancing us as quickly as possible into whatever our universal purpose is.

[Phil75230]

This reminds me of what J. Wes Ulm brought up in his essay What Darwin Did Not Mean: How Social Darwinism Fails Us", published in 2010.

He essentially says that, in the early days of subatomic physics (including quantum, of course), the most brilliant minds in the field actually competed against each other. Yet they didn't keep otehrs in the dark - they actually met from time to time to discuss their findings. This "cooperative competition" actually helped speed progress in this field - their "competition + cooperation" model left the world with a gift eventually worth trillions of dollars.

So I'm of the mind that competition, properly managed, is the most optimum route to go. It's the same essential principle you see in any sports competition. What if American football had no rules against "offsides", or intentional grounding, or roughing the kicker? Then football'd be essentially a barely-restricted riot.

[thetester1]

Originally Posted by Phil75230

This reminds me of what J. Wes Ulm brought up in his essay What Darwin Did Not Mean: How Social Darwinism Fails Us", published in 2010.

He essentially says that, in the early days of subatomic physics (including quantum, of course), the most brilliant minds in the field actually competed against each other. Yet they didn't keep otehrs in the dark - they actually met from time to time to discuss their findings. This "cooperative competition" actually helped speed progress in this field - their "competition + cooperation" model left the world with a gift eventually worth trillions of dollars.

So I'm of the mind that competition, properly managed, is the most optimum route to go. It's the same essential principle you see in any sports competition. What if American football had no rules against "offsides", or intentional grounding, or roughing the kicker? Then football'd be essentially a barely-restricted riot.

Sports is just an example of primitive competition - if everyone were at each other's throats like that (which they may have been in the past) all the time, we would never collaborate to create greater things. They are just highly-paid gladiators for the entertainment of those who go to jobs - how does that advance us into the universe at all, just using human beings as entertainment? I guess this utopian system I'm speaking of does rely on trusting that humans are able to put away their instincts for purely the advancement of society and going further into the universe, but why can't this be the case? Instead of us constantly trying to see which one of us is the best and proving each other wrong, the mission would be for all of us to find ultimate truth and at the same time having all of us be truly equal. Does everyone actually think capitalism and competition is the end system and we can't fight our primal urges to advance into a higher level society? Complete, 100% transparency would be a given, which would hold people to a higher standard than competition or desire for money if we can assume that overall, human beings are good-natured. The only thing preventing this is lack of trust in other humans.

[Phil75230]

Originally Posted by thetester1

Sports is just an example of primitive competition - if everyone were at each other's throats like that (which they may have been in the past) all the time, we would never collaborate to create greater things. They are just highly-paid gladiators for the entertainment of those who go to jobs - how does that advance us into the universe at all, just using human beings as entertainment? I guess this utopian system I'm speaking of does rely on trusting that humans are able to put away their instincts for purely the advancement of society and going further into the universe, but why can't this be the case? Instead of us constantly trying to see which one of us is the best and proving each other wrong, the mission would be for all of us to find ultimate truth and at the same time having all of us be truly equal. Does everyone actually think capitalism and competition is the end system and we can't fight our primal urges to advance into a higher level society? Complete, 100% transparency would be a given, which would hold people to a higher standard than competition or desire for money if we can assume that overall, human beings are good-natured. The only thing preventing this is lack of trust in other humans.

I'm just using sports as an analogy, not the actual argument. Even so, if cooperation / teamwork leads to superior results for teams in even the roughest team sports, and if even those rough sports have rules against the most hurtful or dangerous of acts, then still more does it apply to economic and intellectual endeavors. That is my point.

[thetester1]

Originally Posted by Phil75230

I'm just using sports as an analogy, not the actual argument. Even so, if cooperation / teamwork leads to superior results for teams in even the roughest team sports, and if even those rough sports have rules against the most hurtful or dangerous of acts, then still more does it apply to economic and intellectual endeavors. That is my point.

I understand your point, so if cooperation/teamwork lead to the most superior results, then all of us should cooperate together instead of forming groups against each other. The ultimate team would be all of Earth's population working with each other instead of forming groups against each other - if you disagree, then it seems you are admitting that the only reason humans desire to achieve goals is to beat other humans and that naturally, we would become lazy with no competition instead of striving to achieve higher feats.

[Phil75230]

Originally Posted by thetester1

I understand your point, so if cooperation/teamwork lead to the most superior results, then all of us should cooperate together instead of forming groups against each other. The ultimate team would be all of Earth's population working with each other instead of forming groups against each other - if you disagree, then it seems you are admitting that the only reason humans desire to achieve goals is to beat other humans and that naturally, we would become lazy with no competition instead of striving to achieve higher feats.

Pretty much agree with the bolded part, even if it is unrealistic to believe this all the way.

We desire to achieve goals, ultimately, for any number of reasons. I think chief among these is to either reduce a bad or to achieve a good. If you have a burning desire to accomplish either of these two, then we wouldn't necessarily become lazy - the inner drive in us would be plenty motivation enough. Think of people passionate about their subject matter which happens to be their job. They usually need no (or very little) motivation to work harder to accomplish their task or goals.

Of course, in the real world, many or most people do not consider their job to be the beating heart of their life. Hence, we have to motivate them to work. Competition is a good way to achieve this.