On Competition
Competition exists in just about every area of life.
The intriguing part is that every type of competition I experience has a different kind of opponent and a different kind of victory condition. Perhaps the examples I am about to lay out do not apply to you specifically, but I think the general categories should feel familiar. By identifying the different kinds of competition, we can consider what healthy and unhealthy competition looks like in each situation.
Competition is inevitable in a world of finite resources, but it does not have to be destructive.
The most obvious kind of competition is where there is one winner and one loser. This is demonstrated by my power soccer team playing in Montréal this weekend. We will come in a certain place in the tournament depending on our record. If we come in first place, no other team can come in first place simultaneously.
In this kind of competition, attempting to overcome your adversary is necessary. That is the entire point of sport, after all. You do not play to lose. It is not some cooperative endeavor where we can win at the same time as our opponent wins.
The critical determinant of health in a competition of this sort is sportsmanship. You need to learn how to win and lose graciously; both happen. This kind of competition will be unhealthy if you do not have sportsmanship.
The second kind of competition involves multiple winners and one loser. I am an insurance underwriter by day, and this is the kind of competition we face. When I get a piece of business for our company, I benefit, but my department and the entire company also benefit. This is not to say that we do not have a degree of friendly, internal competition. Do I want to sell more insurance than my coworkers? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, we all realize that when any one of us does well, the entire company benefits, making us all winners.
I say there is only one loser because if I fail to write an account, it is not like one of my coworkers can pick it up and save the day. The company lost in that context. We all lose together.
The important determinant of health in this environment is mutual motivation. We may try to beat each other every month, but we are pushing each other to do better. It is not like a soccer match where one team has to lose for the other to win. Instead, there is a wide world of insurance out there, so we do not step on each other’s toes. Instead, we push each other to perform better, which helps us individually and the company as a whole. Mutual motivation has the potential to make a company thrive in this kind of competitive environment.
Another kind of competition involves one winner and multiple losers. When I submit a paper to an academic journal, there might only be one paper that will be accepted on a given topic (of course, you would not know that when you submit), but many of us are going to submit papers.
It is not like a soccer game where you only have to overcome one opponent. When you submit an article, you do not even know the number of people trying to publish in a particular issue.
A healthy competition with multiple losers requires humility. Often, you will never know the discussions that take place and why certain things happened in the way they did. In a blind review process, like that of many academic journals, you can rest assured that it is not personal, but a particular article may have the right tone, a unique perspective, or simply something consistent with the view of the editors. You cannot take rejection in this context personally because you know that there are many losers, and there are plenty of people in the world that are more talented than you and I are. I know that is a bitter pill to swallow, but it is true.
Finally, there is a situation where competition leads to everyone losing. I see this at play in the real estate market right now. In Vermont, the real estate prices are quite high. Interest rates are also quite high. The inventory of available investment properties is also very limited. As a result, when people purchase buildings, they need to increase the rent more and more to keep up with the higher prices and the higher payments that are required on their mortgages. This is naturally a problem for people trying to rent.
We are caught in a spiral that is not leading anywhere good. I have not bought a property since 2021 because there is literally nothing I can find that makes financial sense. You may doubt my analysis, especially since people obviously have not stopped buying altogether. Maybe I am too conservative. Nevertheless, it is certainly not an exaggeration to realize that it is very difficult to win in this situation right now.
If there is a way to make this kind of competition healthy, it probably can be summarized as finding a way to break out of it. Obviously, in terms of real estate, there are many governmental policies in my state that need to be changed to encourage this market rather than continually making it less friendly for investors. However, generalizing beyond real estate, if something is not helping anyone, the way out is through a dramatic paradigm shift.
As I said at the beginning of this article, competition exists everywhere. It can be healthy or unhealthy. Healthy competition has the potential to bring out the best in everyone. Unhealthy competition can be destructive. We cannot deny its existence, so the vital thing to do is to encourage the kind of competition that brings out the best and motivates all participants to push further while avoiding the destruction that can come from unfair play or arrogance. If we can achieve this sort of environment, the results can literally be world-changing. We have seen it done before, and it can be done again.