Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: Doctor Bob's Third Law
- Introduction: Economic Ignorance
- Chapter 1 Fakeconomics and Economics
- Chapter 2 Market Worship
- Chapter 3 Finance and Criminality
- Chapter 4 Selling Market Myths
- Chapter 5 Riches, “Sovereignty” and “Free Trade”
- Chapter 6 Lies about Government
- Chapter 7 Deficit Disorders and Debt Delirium
- Chapter 8 Governments Cause Inflation?
- Chapter 9 Institutionalized Misery: Austerity in Practice
- Chapter 10 Economics of the 99%
- Notes
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: Doctor Bob's Third Law
- Introduction: Economic Ignorance
- Chapter 1 Fakeconomics and Economics
- Chapter 2 Market Worship
- Chapter 3 Finance and Criminality
- Chapter 4 Selling Market Myths
- Chapter 5 Riches, “Sovereignty” and “Free Trade”
- Chapter 6 Lies about Government
- Chapter 7 Deficit Disorders and Debt Delirium
- Chapter 8 Governments Cause Inflation?
- Chapter 9 Institutionalized Misery: Austerity in Practice
- Chapter 10 Economics of the 99%
- Notes
- Index
Summary
What Is Competition?
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
(Adam Smith)Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.
(Franklin D. Roosevelt)I suspect that most people understand “competition” to mean a process in which more than one person wants an outcome that cannot be gained by everyone seeking it. This interpretation of competition follows that found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which offers “rivalry” as the first definition and “contest among rivals” as the second. The Cambridge dictionary has a more aggressive definition: “a situation in which someone is trying to win something or be more successful than someone else,” and a competition is “an organized event in which people try to win a prize by being the best, fastest, etc.” The explicit implication of these definitions as well as the common-sense view is that in competition someone wins and most lose.
Econfakers reject this definition and all it implies. Where they dwell competition is quite different. First and foremost, it is an outcome, not a process. Second, and equally fundamental, it is not a rivalry in which a few win and most lose. It is continuous harmony of economic coexistence, a romantic dance to market forces.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economics of the 1%How Mainstream Economics Serves the Rich, Obscures Reality and Distorts Policy, pp. 19 - 38Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2014