Perfect competition

“ It is the balance between human industries and human needs which I hold for my part of the world, and which others are continually trying to wrest from me, and which I must keep by all means, fair or foul. Competition is the battle of the strongest, the quickest, the meanest! ”

“ But this great law rules all the wild design: that success (while society is guided by laws of competition) signifies always so much victory over your neighbour as to obtain the direction of his work, and to take the profits of it. ”

“ Let each individual work in harmony with every other, and harmony will pervade the whole. The old theory of competition—that in order to have great advancement, great progress, we must have great competition to induce it—is as false as it is savage and detrimental in its nature. We are just reaching that point where the larger men and women are beginning to see its falsity. ”

“ You have a mighty stage, on which, it is true, you cannot establish a footing without merit and without labour—so much the better; in which strong and resolute rivals will urge you on to emulation, and then competition will task your keenest powers. ”

“ In this, the competition is perfectly fair, and what every man on entering his business must lay his account to. He may rest secure that he will not be supplanted, unless his competitor possess superior skill and industry. ”

“ Then no wiser than those pigs are worldly men who compete, and grudge, and struggle with each other, which shall get most money, most fame, most power over their fellow-men. They will tell you, my child, that that is the true philosophy, and the true wisdom; that competition is the natural law of society, and the source of wealth and prosperity. ”

“ Here too, as everywhere, this competition benefits the thing, or the work, which is the object of competition. The greater and more general the competition, the more quickly improvements and inventions are made in the branch of labour, and the higher is the grade of perfection of the labourers themselves. ”

“ Competition, as an economic position or phase, considered in its origin, is the necessary result of the intervention of machinery, of the establishment of the workshop, and of the theory of reduction of general costs; considered in its own significance and in its tendency, it is the mode by which collective activity manifests and exercises itself, the expression of social spontaneity, the emblem of democracy and equality, the most energetic instrument for the constitution of value, the support of association. ”

“ We have seen that from the ranks of the wealthy few, come the leaders of competitive society, who make their strong holds in the great city. They are the shining lights of the competitive system. They believe in a constant warfare of competition, which brings suffering to the many and success to the few. ”

“ The spirit of competition ruled the American business world at the beginning of the last century, the forces of combination dominated at its close. The new order was the product of necessity, not of choice. ”

“ The remedy for competition, in your opinion, is to make competition universal. But, in order that competition may be universal, it is necessary to procure for all the means of competing; it is necessary to destroy or modify the predominance of capital over labor, to change the relations between employer and workman, to solve, in a word, the antinomy of division and that of machinery ”

“ Competition was the secret of creation. Battle was the law and the way of progress. The world was made for the strong, and only the strong inherited it, and through it all there ran an eternal equity. ”

“ For the value of competition is determined by the value of the standards used to measure it. Instead, then, of asking ourselves whether we believe in competition, we should ask ourselves whether we believe in that for which the competitors compete. ”

“ I dare say we shall never return to the old order of individual competition and that the organization of business upon a great scale of coöperation is, up to a certain point, itself normal and inevitable. ”

“ Here is a fair adjustment between logical competitors, the retention of competition where it is not practicable to eliminate it, and its abolishment where it is feasible to uproot it and establish great operating economies in the wake of the change. ”

“ We must think of the expedient of competition itself as varying in a thousand different directions, and shading by imperceptible gradations into other methods of appointment; and of the posts offered for competition as differing each from all the rest, as overlapping those posts for which competition in some form is suitable though it has not yet been tried, and as touching, at the marginal point on their curve, those posts for which competition is unsuitable. ”

“ So completely obsessed was he with this American sense of competition that he admitted competition even among mountains, and judged of some hundreds of the towering crests of the earth as he would have judged of six American hotel servants who struggled at the station for his bag. There is a very general idea--how general I cannot imagine-- that competition is productive of or conducive to individuality. The defenders of the extreme forms of competition invariably insist upon this argument, that the struggle develops personality and variety. ”

“ They can spray the fire of competition with speeches all they like, but they can't put it out. Because why? Well, because this life thing is going on, and competition is the only way it can get on. Call it Nature if you want to. ”

“ Other voices have been raised in denunciation of competition because "competition creates monopoly." In other words, competition, if carried to its logical conclusion, ends in the annihilation of competition. ”

“ HUMANITY AND THE FUTURE. Competition was natural enough at one time, but do you think you are competing today? Many of you think you are competing. Against whom? Against Rockefeller? About as I would if I had a wheelbarrow and competed with the Santa Fe from here to Kansas City. That is about the way you are competing; but your boys will not have even that chance—if capitalism lives that long. ”

“ The fact that abundance, and not scarcity, creates competition, should be held constantly in mind by the reader during the perusal of this book, as it throws a searching light not only on the statements herein contained, but upon every problem relating to social life and human conduct. Moreover, if it be deeply and earnestly meditated upon, and its lessons applied to individual conduct, it will make plain the Way which leads to the Kingdom. ”

“ We have now to bestow the rewards which have been brilliantly won by the most successful competitors in the society’s lists. I say the most successful, because to-night we should particularly observe, I think, that there is success in all honest endeavour, and that there is some victory gained in every gallant struggle that is made. To strive at all involves a victory achieved over sloth, inertness, and indifference; and competition for these prizes involves, besides, in the vast majority of cases, competition with and mastery asserted over circumstances adverse to the effort made. ”

“ Coming to the serious objection as to successful competition, I believe it is true. But is that a reason for driving them out of the Colony? Will such a method commend itself to a body of civilized men? What is it that makes them so successful competitors? He who runs may see that it is nothing but their habits, which are extremely simple, though not barbarous, as The Natal Advertiser would have it. ”

“ Competition—the way a man threads his way through the men who compete with him—would constitute the highest, purest test of a man's sense of spiritual values—the real monastery of modern life.
All any man can do, all society can do with some people is either to refuse to compete with them, ostracize them, socially and industrially, or clap them into jail. ”

“ As we rise to purely intellectual or moral enjoyments, competition gives way to generous rivalry in co-operation. In the pursuit of knowledge or goodness the rivalry is no longer antagonism—what one gains another does not lose. One man's success is not another's failure. On the contrary, the enrichment of one is the enrichment of all. Both in the production and the consumption of the highest goods of Science, Art, and Virtue, social, not anti-social, motives are the chief [378] stimulus. ”

“ Now let us call to mind the accepted proverb that "Competition is the life of trade," and this will make us see that, accompanying this stupendous trade, extending over, and into, every corner of the world, there will be stupendous competition, involving in a vast and complicated net, every red-blooded nation of the earth. ”

“ Little co-partnerships were springing up all over the world. Everybody competed with everybody else in his line. Manufactures multiplied, and it became the common belief that “competition was the life of trade.” ”

“ Sturtevant, in his "Economics," says: "Competition is that law of human nature by which every man who makes an exchange will seek to obtain as much as he can of the wealth of another for a given amount of his own wealth." Simmer this down to its essence, and we have simply: Competition is selfishness. To the other evident faults of the definition we need not allude. ”

“ Six days in the week we are following the Golden Rule reversed. Now, when we approach a business transaction in competition, what is more natural than that we should try to get the better of it?—get the better of our fellowman?—cheat him if we can? ”

“ How can the present debilitating fluctuations be ironed out while the whole industry is proceeding on a basis of mere individualism? We do not wish to disparage competition, which is the life of trade, but to advocate a higher form of coöperating competition. ”

“ But what there cannot be is a competition which runs to the point of mutual destructiveness, or such accumulation of the fruits of skill and labour in a few hands as maims or starves the life of the majority. ”

“ Competition is only desirable in so far as it is a process by which the useful qualities are encouraged by an adequate, and not more than an adequate, stimulus; and in which, therefore, there is not involved the degradation and the misery on the one side, the excessive reward on the other, of the unsuccessful and the successful in the struggle. Competition, therefore, we might say, could be unequivocally beneficial only in an ideal society ”

“ What in the form of principle or theory was propounded as the equality of all has found here in competition its realization and practical carrying out; for égalité is - free competition. All are, before the state - simple individuals; in society, or in relation to each other - competitors.
I need be nothing further than a simple individual to be able to compete with all others aside from the prince and his family: a freedom which formerly was made impossible by the fact that only by means of one's corporation, and within it, did one enjoy any freedom of effort. ”

“ A man grows tired of the same monotonous surroundings, and of his own thankless task to please a feverish, pettish public. Competition—a huge spirit-crushing engine—makes many thoughtful minds revert to an insatiable longing for simplicity, for that pristine equality which characterised the happy life-span of our ancestors. ”

“ The reason that the masters of combination have sought to shut out competition is that the basis of control under competition is brains and efficiency. I admit that any large corporation built up by the legitimate processes of business, by economy, by efficiency, is natural ”

“ And, in fact, to confine ourselves to the subject under discussion, it is obvious that competition, practised for itself and with no other object than to maintain a vague and discordant independence, can end in nothing, and that its oscillations are eternal. ”

“ The common expressions of trade afford still further evidence. We often hear the expression: "A healthy competition." But the very existence of the phrase implies that there may be an unhealthy competition, and if so, what is it? ”

“ Competition, as compared with status and custom, has some notable merits; and when the eighteenth century was throwing off some of the burdens inherited from the more static Middle Ages, competition appeared to be a panacea for all the ills of society. ”

“ Competition will continue, but it will be less rivalry for acquisition of material goods, and more an emulation of local groups to enrich direct experience with appreciatively enjoyed intellectual and artistic wealth. ”

“ He dwelt also upon the thought that social evolution among men brought into being, along with competition, the growing enlargement of the associated competitive group; and the larger the competitive group, the greater the scope of sympathy, benevolence and public authority. Through the selective process of competition, a permanent element of human society, we have the survival of the fit; but it is for society to create such economic conditions that only desirable social qualities shall constitute eminent fitness for survival. ”

“ They said that competition was the mainspring of life; they seemed to think exercise was the goal of existence. A man whom I saw there and who, I learnt, had been chosen to teach the young on account of his wisdom, told me that competition trained the man to sharpen his faculties ”

“ Competition is here wasteful. But when we have to do, not with a specific product, or with a fixed field such as that of street railways or city lighting, but with the open field of invention and service, we need to provide for continuous coöperation, and competition seems at least one useful agency. ”

“ A certain number of individuals enjoy, in the beginning, equal opportunities to perform certain acts; and in the competition resulting there from some of these individuals or associations obtain advantages over their competitors, or over their fellow-citizens whom they employ or serve. Sometimes these advantages and the practices whereby they are obtained are profitable to a larger number of people than they injure. ”