Free competition

“ Look at the bees or ants, whose Civilization is a natural and not, as ours is, an artificial one: do they encourage free competition with its inevitable concomitants of wealth and power accumulated in the hands of a few to the prejudice of the community? Not so. To each is assigned an equal, if varying, share in the economy of the community. With them work has its duty, and, as for idleness, it is not possible. But what duty has the successful business man, except to his own success? what duty has the wealthy aristocrat, except to his own pleasure? ”

“ But it is, of course, equally obvious that they have grown up in a society which supposes free competition in every part of its industrial system; that co-operative societies, so far as the outside world is concerned, have to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market; that the rate of wages of their members is still fixed by competition; and that they encourage habits of saving and forethought which presuppose that each man is to have private ends of his own. In what sense, then, can co-operation ever be regarded as really opposed to competition? ”

“ I reply, it is not free competition that has done that; it is illicit competition. It is competition of the kind that the law ought to stop, and can stop,—this crushing of the little man.
You know, of course, how the little man is crushed by the trusts. He gets a local market. The big concerns come in and undersell him in his local market, and that is the only market he has; if he cannot make a profit there, he is killed. They can make a profit all through the rest of the Union, while they are underselling him in his locality, and recouping themselves by what they can earn elsewhere. ”

“ Free competition is a [Pg 184] free field open to every individual, provided or not with the elements necessary and indispensable to its manifestations; free competition, in a word, is liberty, but liberty without other rule than the material and moral force, of which each one may be able to dispose in the presence of the thousand causes which produce a difference in the position of individuals. ”

“ Only through full and free competition can free markets, free entry into business, and opportunities for the expression and growth of personal initiative and individual judgment be assured. The preservation and expansion of such competition is basic not only to the economic well-being but to the security of this Nation. ”

“ No matter what shape it has taken, be it a banking monopoly, or a land monopoly, or a national post-office monopoly, or a common school system, or a compulsory tax, or a setting-up of non-aggressive individuals to be shot at by an enemy, he hastens to offer it one hand, while he waves the flag of free competition with the other. ”

“ The reason, of course, is that the doctrine generally has been accepted that free competition is worth more to society than it costs, and that on this ground the infliction of the damage is privileged. ”

“ Socialism trusts to competition, looks to competition for the service and improvement of the world. And in order that competition between man and man may have free play, Socialism seeks to abolish one particular form of competition, the competition to get and hold property—even to marry property, that degrades our present world. But it would leave men free to compete for fame, for service, for salaries, for position and authority, for leisure, for love and honour. ”

“ But is it not strange that the very gentlemen who tell us in such emphatic language that the people are shamefully ill-educated, should yet persist in telling us that under a system of free competition the people are certain to be excellently educated? Only this morning the opponents of our plan circulated a paper in which they confidently predict that free competition will do all that is necessary, if we will only wait with patience. ”

“ Upon this issue, so joined, I stand firmly in favor of the principle of competition, and that system of Individualism which guards, protects and encourages competition. It is that system of government under which we live to-day—a government of the people, by the people and for the people—the United States of America—a free system of government, in the best and broadest sense of the term.
Under this free system of government, whereby individuals are free to get a living or to pursue wealth as each chooses, the usual result is competition. ”

“ This theory manifestly makes the justice of the distribution effected by free competition to depend on the false assumption of the natural equality of the competitors, and therefore as manifestly implies that unless men are equal in talents and opportunities, the system of unlimited freedom may produce a distribution that is seriously unjust. ”

“ These twenty-four gentlemen administer that corporation as if it belonged to them. The amazing thing to me is that the people of the United States have not seen that the administration of a great business like that is not a private affair; it is a public affair.
I have been told by a great many men that the idea I have, that by restoring competition you can restore industrial freedom, is based upon a failure to observe the actual happenings of the last decades in this country; because, they say, it is just free competition that has made it possible for the big to crush the little. ”

“ If the policy on which our law is founded is too narrowly expressed in the term free competition, we may substitute free struggle for life. Certainly the policy is not limited to struggles between persons of the same class competing for the same end. ”

“ It has been the traditional dogma among economists and publicists in these modern communities that free competition between the businessmen in charge will indefeasibly act to bring the productiveness of industry to the highest practicable pitch and would lead to the most unreserved and vigilant endeavour to serve the community's material needs at all points. ”

“ Competition, no doubt, considering man as producer, must often interfere with his individual and immediate interests. But if we consider the great object of all labor, the universal good, in a word, Consumption, we cannot fail to find that Competition is to the moral world what the law of equilibrium is to the material one. ”

“ While that contest was undecided, much was said and written about the advantages of free competition, and about the danger of suffering the State to regulate matters which should be left to individuals. There has consequently arisen in the minds of persons who are led by words, and who are little in the habit of making distinctions, a disposition to apply to political questions and moral questions principles which are sound only when applied to commercial questions. ”

“ Egoist's argument that free competition will tend to dis- tribute rent by a readjustment of wages is exactly to my purpose. Have I not told him from the start that Anarchists will gladly welcome any tendency to equality through liberty? But Egoist seems to object to reaching equality by this road. It must be reached by law or not at all. If reached by competition, "competition would be harassed." In other words, competition would harass competition. ”

“ By setting the little men of America free, you are not damaging the giants.
It may be that certain things will happen, for monopoly in this country is carrying a body of water such as men ought not to be asked to carry. When by regulated competition,—that is to say, fair competition, competition that fights fair,—they are put upon their mettle, they will have to economize, and they cannot economize unless they get rid of that water. ”

“ The objective of this Law is to promote and protect the exercise of free competition and the efficiency that benefits the producers and consumers; and to prohibit monopolistic and oligopolistic practices and other means that could impede, restrict, falsify, or limit the enjoyment of economic freedom. ”

“ Monopoly is in the order of nature. The relaxation of monopoly, and the introduction of the free play of effort, that is, of liberty and competition, is due to the growth of civilization. It seems to be believed by a great many of the popular writers of the day that there not only was liberty in the primitive state of society, but that liberty did not then mean competition. ”

“ In fact, the large plant admits its limitations when it turns over to its smaller competitor the jobs it cannot do as efficiently.
There is nothing wrong with competition that competition cannot cure. The faults of competition are in the impediments that are put in its way by force—the restraints, taxes, and regulations that handicap some competitors and give others a monopoly or quasi-monopoly position. Competition serves Society best when it is free. ”

“ That the "value" of ordinary commodities can only be determined by the results of free competition, in a free government, conducted by free men. "Value," being not at all the result of any one citizen's view, desire or decree, but is that of all men, acting in a free market in free competition, in untrammeled freedom ”

“ As every fruit has in it that which causes its final dissolution, and within it also the germs of a future and higher life, so civilized society carries in it the germs of its decay and dissolution, society being a natural product, as fruit is, of God's providence. Free competition is the destructive agent, or one of the most important agents in its dissolution. ”

“ And the Volitionalists believe that everybody reincarnates as he pleases, and so they favor continuance of the present system of private ownership of wealth and private profit under a system of free competition. ”

“ Therefore the safeguarding of liberty in the world which is growing up is far more difficult than it was in the nineteenth century, when free competition was still a reality. Whoever cares about the freedom of the mind must face this situation fully and frankly, realizing the inapplicability of methods which answered well enough while industrialism was in its infancy. ”

“ All higher development of the faculties, no less than all material progress, is at a stand-still since the abolition of free competition. Self-interest used to sharpen the wits of individuals, and bring out their [117] inventiveness. But the emulation of the many who strove in the same field of labour, constantly operated to make common property of the achievements of individuals. ”

“ Then come two chapters, entitled "Restraints on Free Competition" and "Restraints on Free Contract," respectively indicating various cases in which the restraints imposed by law must be supplemented by self-restraints, and instancing one of the excesses committed under free competition as amounting to "commercial murder." Chapters enjoining further self-restraints for the benefit of others are followed, in the division on Positive Beneficence, by chapters enjoining efforts on their behalf, and the duty which falls on the superior of mitigating the evils which the inferior have to bear. ”

“ Absolute free play of competition is neither desirable nor even possible. On the other hand, from the standpoint of the individual, competition means mobility, freedom, and, from the point of view of society, pragmatic or experimental change. Restriction of competition is synonymous with limitation of movement, acquiescence in control, and telesis, Ward's term for changes ordained by society in distinction from the natural process of change. ”

“ It asks the government to "let alone" the industrial affairs of the country, and leave private enterprise to take its own course. Its adherents are fond of asserting that each man knows his own wants and can direct his own business affairs much better than any government can direct them for him. It declares that free competition is [198] the best possible agent to regulate all industrial affairs, and it ascribes all economic evils to the fact that free competition has been thwarted or destroyed. ”

“ It may be said, that he shuts out the public from their free use. Not so: his reward will only serve to stimulate others to make new combinations, in which case competition brings down the per-centage. ”

“ Louis Blanc tell us again, that competition leads to monopoly, and that, for the same reason, cheapness leads to exorbitant prices? That competition tends to drain the sources of consumption, and urges production to a destructive activity? That competition forces production to increase, and consumption to decrease;--whence it follows that free people produce for the sake of not consuming; ”

“ If in the ideal society there are still prizes to be won, positions which may be the object of legitimate desire, and if those positions are to be open to every one, whatever his circumstances, we might still have the keenest competition, though carried on by different methods. If, on the other hand, no man's position were to be better than another's, we might suppress competition at the price of suppressing every motive for social as well as individual improvement. ”

“ That attitude is old-fashioned. This is no longer an age of parochialism but of competition, in art and science just as much as in commerce—coöperation with your own group, but with those outside it, competition to the death! ”

“ Civilization is but a curtailment of competition, a substitution of coöperation for universal strife and enmity. To say, therefore, that a restraint of competition is equivalent to a restraint of trade, is to admit that, however far civilization has advanced, it has not yet eliminated a barbarous degree of selfishness ”