Re: Let's discuss
I would argue that it isn't competition that sits at the root of innovation. It's need.
I don't think it's so much that you want to beat the other guy, in and of itself. I think it's that if you don't beat the other guy, he gets a larger slice of that pie. And if getting a small slice of the pie means you starve to death, then your need to survive is going to push you to innovate so that it's you who gets the larger slice of pie. It's a classic "I win, you lose" mentality which does not have to exist.
There are a lot of things that have gotten better because competition under capitalism sets up a pretty dark scenario if you lose the contest. Fine. But that's not the way it has to be, and I think that trying to assert this dynamic as an intrinsic part of human nature is shortsighted at best, and dishonest at worst.
So let's get back to need here.
Scientists tell us that we're wrecking the planet. Okay, I'd say that's a pretty big need. We aren't in competition with each other, we're (hopefully) in cooperation because we have a common goal. New energy, cleaner energy. The banning of fossil fuels and single-use plastics. All kinds of other things I'm not going to list here. We're going to do those not because John from Corporation X said he'd get there first; we're going to do it because we might fucking die if we don't. I'm sorry, but under the idea that only competition breeds innovation, we're all doomed. We have to constantly keep ourselves at odds with one another, us and them, in order to continue improving. And I can't tell you how bleak that looks.
But again, to circle back to need. What happened with vaccines in the past, or even vaccines today? Medical research that's beneficial to everyone? I mean, we could have a talk about big pharma hosing its clientele, and how this is being peddled now, but at base, medicine is meant to improve quality of life. I would say that we all need to survive, at least insofar as our bodies last.
And I could go on here, but I hope I've proven my point.
The tl.dr version is simple:
Yes, it's true that if you put two people in competition to outdo one another, or to compete for presumably limited resources, they'll hry hard to fuck the other guy over. But it's also true that actual need is the baseline for what drives these people. Not the desire to win, but the need to possess whatever is at stake: money, livelihood, property, territory. Power, in other words. We have turned power into your reward for success.
In a far-future socialism-based society, that competition won't need to happen, but we're never going to be perfect. There will always be new diseases and viruses. There will always be crime. There will always be ways to improve on things. Growing population will require better resource allocation, for instance. There will always be creative minds ready and eager to share. I promise you that the death of capitalism, and its inherent us-and-them mentality, will not kill innovation. In fact, maybe we'll go back to "improving" things because they actually need it, instead of the shit we see today.
I'm reminded of a Serts commercial from the late 1990s. This was the point at which I realized that innovation had partially jumped the shark. The commercial's only selling point was that Serts now came in a new box. "Cool mint drops, cool new box" was the slogan. Seriously? You're not fucking eating the box! It's cool that you're repackaging, but are you actually improving the product itself? And this is just a microcosm of the situation. People now release version after version, with very little difference, for more money, because capitalism. I'd love to see us genuinely improve on things in ways that make sense and in ways that aren't simply driven by the engine of money.
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