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The Myths of Competition
NMB, Florida December 24, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
THE MYTHS OF COMPETITION
I can remember when I liked to compete - when I was a child. My
childishness extended into early adulthood when I knew the prize was
advancement. That means, if you are on a low rung of a career ladder when
you start out you try your best to win recognition and go up on higher rungs
or, if you are smart enough, you switch ladders. I was never smart enough
for the latter.
You discover early that while you may subscribe to a morality that does not
include cheating and having influence tip the scale in your favor, others
do. I believe I never cheated and used influence to tip the scale in my
favor in any endeavor. I felt that if I didn't win on ability, memory,
inventiveness or sheer brilliance then I wouldn't play the game others did.
For many years I stayed in the same place until brilliance showed itself. I
have always maintained that I was never paid what I was worth. For some
reason there was always someone else my "bosses" or administrators thought
was more deserving than I was.
Now, competition in business is a wholly other thing. The American ideal
is that a small business can compete in a market just like the big guys.
This is not true. The idea that competition will lower prices and these will
find a true level is also not true. It should be obvious that the odds favor
the big and the strong even though the small and puny may be more deserving.
This may be obvious in the mind of the small and the puny but size is
impressive and if you grow that big, we think, big must be better.
We have had the idea that breaking up monopolies so new, small and
energetic competitors can drive prices down to reasonable levels and
everyone will be happy. This idea is not true either. I remember "Mother
Bell", the huge and only telephone company available. It was broken apart
due to this myth. Competition was stifled although you knew your calls would
most likely go through with "Ma". People believe all kinds of strange
things. They believed that the hugely successful Telephone Company would be
replicated when many small companies vied for the same business selling
connectivity services to people living in the same area. That belief led to
many unlikely small businesses jumping into the market where they didn't
belong and where ultimately they failed. Meanwhile they needlessly
cluttered up a service used by all of us with competing claims no one
understood and where most of their competing claims are still
incomprehensible.
The idea was a myth because it just wasn't so. Wireless services and the
computer suddenly replaced the telephone and cell phone availability
complicated things and prices were driven up. Where once you could rent a
phone cheaply, have it serviced practically free and telephone calls were
really cheap you now owned the whole shooting match and the costs reached
the sky. Competition didn't do the job we all were taught to believe it
could do. What it did was to ruin a perfectly good public service - one
excellent phone company for everybody. Wouldn't it be nice and isn't it
obvious that public telephones universally available at $.05 a call anywhere
in the world would be simpler than the phones stuck in every ear? The old
fears that radiation would harm our bodies and brains may one day be
realized.
The scary thing is that the notion that competition is good has been
extended by some pundits to the way we govern ourselves. Instead of there
being BIG government, let there be competitors for the privilege of
"serving" the public with services formerly provided by government
"employees". Everybody knows these are undeserving and overpaid and do not
work for you and me, only themselves. "Contracting" these services out to
companies that will make it "profitable" is involved somehow. Service got
lost in this formula.
Competition has its place. I think we overdo competition with the emphasis
on winning as being not only the most important thing but being the only
thing. In business, providing service is I think the most important thing. I
think this notion has been perverted by those we have elected to manage our
political lives. Now, if we could only get the "public servants" who run our
government to believe they serve us instead of we serving them our lives
would be much simpler and better.
Carol's Evaluation: 9.5 out of 10.
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