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GREAT AMERICAN THINK-OFF FINAL FOUR ESSAYS FOR 2005 Competition or Cooperation: Which benefits society more?
Judith Miles Essay: Cooperation is More Beneficial to Society than Competition During a vacation in Amsterdam, I discovered how society benefits much more from cooperation than competition. While out on a stroll, my aunt and sister bought some potato salad at a neighborhood deli. It was so delicious we consumed it that same evening and then set off to get more. Identifying the shop where they bought it proved daunting. Walking down the street, we stopped at four different places. Their facades and layouts were identical, but they each sold different foods. One sold fish, another meat and poultry, yet another cheese and wine. Only one sold prepared dishes, including our beloved potato salad. When my aunt asked why their stores were so similar, yet so different, the potato salad master replied, "This way we all keep our businesses and all have good lives." To the pure capitalist, my potato salad example may resemble collusion. However, while the vendors had a sense of security, they did not conspire to keep prices at a certain level. They were still subject to market forces of supply and demand. Their customers still decided what they were willing to pay. However, the cooperative spirit that enabled their very existence created a beguiling atmosphere that is vanishing rapidly within America's borders. I think of Amsterdam when driving past boarded-up storefronts that finished last in the competition for the consumer dollar. Those retail ghosts are evidence of the increasing clout of big-box retailers and multi-national distributors who force down supplier prices in an effort to entice every possible consumer. They want to eliminate all competition in the marketplace. Such a corporation may offer consumers greater savings than the smaller competitors, but those savings are created by offshore manufacturing and customer service call centers that used to be in our economy and workforce. Do the resulting lower wages and higher overall unemployment really benefit our society? Competition is the impatient and greedy child who needs immediate gratification. Cooperation is the wise, visionary parent who patiently reinforces the importance of considering all issues and potential outcomes. The benefits of cooperative systems are evident in each of our concentric circles of interactions. Rotate 360 degrees through your world and you will see how cooperation evolves our species. Within the family, competition creates sibling rivalry and tattletales. Cooperation is an older sibling remembering when he used to be the one who broke the dinner plates and then helping a younger sibling clean up their own broken pieces before Mom and Dad get home. Within our neighborhoods, competition is the pressure to tote your tot in the latest designer baby buggy. Cooperation is visiting sleep-deprived new parents with a casserole dish and a box of diapers. Competition in the workplace includes backstabbing colleagues who take credit for your ideas. Cooperation is donating an ill coworker some of your sick leave even though you know your workload may increase during their absence. In the global economy, competition is a paper manufacturer that clears virgin forests for wood pulp, because recycled paper products cannot be competitively priced. Cooperation is a partnership forged between industrial and environmental concerns, both recognizing that our future, and future profits, depend on using raw materials acquired by practices that, as in the Native American tradition, leave no tracks. Even at the extremes, cooperation trumps competition. Competitive personalities tend to adopt zero-sum mentalities. If you win, I lose. Therefore, I must keep you from winning. At its extreme, competition may become twisted by unsavory impulses and practices. People want more power. They make decisions because they fear losing power. Business owners hide unfavorable research results from the public. The entertainment industry exploits the impressionable minds of our children. Wars are prolonged beyond necessity. Society gets deceived. When combined with the alloys of greed, fear or dishonesty, competition can hasten a nation’s decline. At its extreme, cooperation may involve more deliberations than absolutely necessary, but it ultimately creates reasoned solutions that account for effects on all parties involved. Cooperation increases social capital through reciprocal interactions, equitably distributed resources and evenly applied laws. Indeed, small businesses seeking to compete with larger corporations would do well to replicate the example of the Dutch vendors by peddling premium experiences and quality that can’t be found in the discount bin. I remember fondly how tasty the Dutch potato salad was, but the lesson I learned about cooperation was even more satisfying.
Barbara Parker Competition Benefits Society More. I remember sitting around the kitchen table with our three children. What did we talk about? Well, we started with school work, usually. What tests were coming up, how the day had gone, what they had learned of interest. We talked about sports, we analyzed their games. We talked about their allowances and what chores they had to do. We talked about whose turn it was to say Grace, to clear, to do the dishes. This table was and is the heart of our home, as it is in most families. This is where children learn to become members of society. By learning, at the kitchen table, how to function in the small group, children learn to function in the larger. So what was happening at our kitchen table? We were talking about competition. Have you done your homework, so that you will make good grades? Will you make the team? Did you contribute to your team's win (or loss)? And if you were naughty or disobedient, what were the consequences? We did all this talking in a supportive way, and encouraged our children to cooperate, to play nicely with others, but the bottom line is that our kitchen table was a highly competitive environment. It is human nature to compete. We are constantly competing with ourselves to be better, to accomplish more in the short time we have here. We all are trying to achieve something, be it a better mind, a better body, a better world for all. Even Yoga, perhaps the most non -competitive thing I can imagine, is about making yourself perform each asana better, trying to still yourself more perfectly. We simply cannot not compete, especially with ourselves. It makes each of us do just a little better. But what do we want society to be? If we want a better standard of living for all, how can this best be attained? Do we want peace, happiness, wealth, security, clean air, less stress? I think that we all agree that these are some of the goals we set for a wonderful world and a wonderful life for all of us. How do we get there? I believe that we get there by challenging ourselves and each other to do better. Recently, I watched a 60 Minute program about Google. Everyone at the headquarters seems to be working together and the atmosphere is friendly and supportive; i.e. cooperative. The big however is that each one of these employees has gone through a stringent application testing process and is the cream of the crop in his field. Do you really think that the pleasing atmosphere is based on anything more than extreme competition? Google's contribution to society is incalculable, and it could not have achieved this end without competition. Society should not be stagnant. Socialism may be the ultimate example of limiting competition. This theory can work for a short time, until progress slows. Then the benefits for society slow also. Witness the former Soviet Union. What seemed to Marx an ideal philosophical model for society became, when put into action by Lenin and later leaders, a stifling and crippling limit on the progress and happiness of society. If people are not allowed to achieve what they best can, they, too, will stagnate. China, while still professing to be a socialistic state, has in fact become competitive and capitalistic. Choice is what makes a society strong. Competition spurs the imagination. The competitive spirit is the creative spirit. Who, seventy years ago, could have predicted that we could walk on the moon? Neil Armstrong's first steps were the result of Sputnik's success and of America's determination to compete with Russia. The technological impact of those steps is enormous. Our world expanded and each of us feels that we can soar as high as Apollo 11 did. But is achievement through competition beneficial to society? Society is, obviously, simply a mass of all of us, living and working together. What works best for the happiness of all? Well, in my opinion, what works around the kitchen table is what works in the big world. We need healthy competition, balanced with some good common sense and a lot of love.
Blaine Rada Cooperation benefits society more. My first memory of the negative consequences of competition is from kindergarten. Competition is striving against another, and my quest that day as a 5-year-old was to get the biggest and best blocks to play with before someone else did. My punishment for this behavior was to be taken into the bathroom, where I had to take a bite of Ivory soap and chew it. I quickly learned that sharing and cooperating with others was a more appropriate behavior. Cooperation benefits society more than competition because competition is primarily focused on the individual, not all people collectively. While competition does have a place in our lives, its benefits to society are small compared to that of a cooperative effort. Charles Darwin's theories of natural selection and survival of the fittest have attempted to explain why some species have survived and thrived while competing for limited resources. Some would argue this proves that competition is the natural way of life. However, as the Earth's resources become more depleted and our population continues to increase, survival of the fittest would dictate that only some of us will make it to the next stage of evolution. A world inhabited by only the most competitive and successful members of our species would be an unsatisfying place. Being on top, or winning, at the expense of others can be so lonely that it feels like losing. One of the most competitive arenas is sports. I participated in several sports in the 9th grade, and my fondest memory is earning 1st place in the mile relay, an event that required total cooperation between me and three other runners to achieve the best result that day. There's a difference between trying to beat everyone else and trying to do your best. Shortly before his death, the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi retracted his famous words, "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." He said, "I wish to hell I'd never said the damned thing. I meant having a goal." The business world is also very competitive, yet many businesses have realized that they can increase their profits by cooperating with each other, as evidenced by food courts in shopping malls and the car dealership row found in many towns. Businesses have also discovered that employees cooperating in teams can unleash more creativity than people competing against one another. Some salespeople, many who are encouraged to be competitive, have come to realize the value of win-win relationships with their customers. As a young adult I gained experience in selling cars and insurance. Those jobs were highly competitive, and because the focus was on closing the deal instead of doing what was best for the consumer, I moved on to other careers that would benefit society more. We have laws in this country that make it illegal to be too competitive. You can't kill someone or take something that doesn't belong to you just because you have the physical strength to do it. Our prisons are filled to capacity, and some of the inmates have decided that getting what they want is more important than behaving in ways that benefit society. Violence may serve those that can compete, but it doesn't compare to the good that can come from people working together. War can be the most violent form of competition, and at the same time one of the best examples of cooperation. Adolf Hitler said, "It must never be forgotten that nothing that is really great in this world has ever been achieved by coalitions." I've twice had the privilege of visiting the northern coast of France where the D-Day invasions occurred. While I stood among the crosses at the American Cemetery, looking out over Omaha beach, it was very clear that Hitler's words were incorrect. It was a coalition, the cooperative forces of many, which achieved something great on June 6, 1944. Competition brings out the beast in us; cooperation brings out the best. The Golden Rule suggests that we consider the needs of others in our own actions, which doesn't work in a competitive environment. I learned back in kindergarten that not following The Golden Rule has undesirable consequences. I still use Ivory soap to this day, but for a different purpose. Its sweet smell reminds me that cooperation benefits society more than the bitter taste of competition.
Angelo Volpe When I was a teenager, I used to play basketball with some kids on my street. My friend The Captain and my sister Lisa were always on one team, and the Captain's brother Bobby, another kid Wilbur, and I were always on the other team. Of the hundred or so games we played, Lisa and the Captain won all but two or three. The Captain was six-foot-three, a fantastic rebounder with a decent shot, and my sister never missed. (She also would shoot without any arc, which I always believed defied the laws of physics.) My team would lose each game by two or three points. We used to play to 21 by ones with three-pointers worth two points, and you had to win by at least two points. My team, 'The Comeback Team', would always be down 18 to 3 or 4 and then come alive to lose 21-19 or even 24-22 in overtime. While we rarely won a game, we learned what it meant to lose without being defeated. And Lisa and the Captain learned that they were not invincible. Competition taught us all important life lessons. Cooperation has its merits. Christianty's 'turn the other cheek' and communism's 'from each according to his ability to each according to his need' offer peaceful solutions to violent competition, but they often fail to motivate people to develop and grow. (Both the hitter of the cheek and the high-ability person who works more but gets the same reward have little incentive to better themselves.) By contrast, Lisa and the Captain became better basketball players because 'The Comeback Team' pushed them hard. Not content to merely win each game, they wanted to defeat us, to prove that they were superior, but we made them sweat hard for every victory. Yes, team work is cooperation, but even within a team, members must compete with each other to perform better, to be the best. The problem with competition is that too often it becomes dirty, unfair, malicious. This is not inherent, just as cooperation is not inherently benevolent. The Nazis and the KKK cooperate with each other just fine. People who criticize capitalism often jeer that a profit-centered economy inevitably dehumanizes and exploits people; competition for higher profit is inescapably cut-throat because if you don't play dirty then surely your competitor will. This is nonsense. Shakespeare beat his competition with quality. Had Lisa and the Captain played dirty, fouling and such, nobody would have played against them. Businesses face a similar situation: once the public sees what they are doing, exploiting child labor in foreign countries or destroying the environment, some consumers will stop buying their goods; thus, some profit, however small, will be lost. In the long term, these losses add us, especially to people who care only about profit. Good will among consumers is a key business asset in any competitive economy. In the non-economic spheres of society, competition also benefits individuals. Keeping up with the Joneses may lead to materialism, a spiritual vice to some, but it certainly cures laziness. If I care that my neighbor's lawn is green, then I am more motivated to work harder to compete with her. As a result, I exercise more, and the neighborhood may look at little more pleasant, which in turn motivates other neighborhoods to clean up their act. Lisa and the Captain could have easily stopped bettering themselves because they always won in the end, but competition pushed them to compete not only with us but with themselves. Cooperation has a tendency to make people more comfortable with the status quo, to reach a goal and then stop. Competition, however, perpetuates a certain healthy greed. In the end, society benefits more from competition than cooperation. While it takes a certain amount of cooperation to agree that we should compete fairly (i.e., according to certain rules), what motivates us to evolve as a society is the competition that drives us to work harder for changes that matter to us. Even evil competition inspires society to fight for positive change. Without hate groups or terrorists competing for dominance, we would be less inclined to actively safeguard the freedoms and rights that we cherish. It is one thing to exclaim that all people are created equal. It is a far different thing to stop a lynch mob from killing an undesirable person. What saves the person ultimately is our defiant refusal to cooperate with the lynch mob. |
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