In what sense can the following be called competition in the economist's wierd sense of the word: a high tech sector enjoying massive rental income protected by intellectual property rights; the greatest merger wave in close to a century; the use of national and regional tarriffs, non tarriff barriers and subsidies to secure the position of centralized domestic capital both internally and externally.
One can't imagine a world in which the economist's idiosyncratic conception of (perfect) competition applies less and less. Of course Greenspan is correct to suggest that there is a bit of unease about the slaughterous competition over the diminishing flow of surplus value between nations and firms thus turning to mergers, regional agreements to shut competitors out, anti dumping suits, pornographically expensive patent battles, predatory greenfield investments, aggressive invasion of developing countries' markets, competitive devaluations, etc. In the context of such competition, firms and nations turn to globalisation and regionalisation, free trade and protection, WTO lawsuits and espionage. There a lot more vehicles for this competition than Greenspan recognizes.
Without the ability or willingness of govts to secure growing effective demand through more deficit financing, the fraternity of capital is breaking down in violent ways. US firms may be weathering the storm nicely presently due to massive foreign purchase of commercial paper (debt however being used to buy back stock more than invest which has been ridiculously inflated through arbitrary inflation of value of IT purchases), supply side relief due to the world's excess capacity washing up on US shores and artificial demand stimulus from asset inflation (simulated wealth from a refusal to raise margin requirements and cool down the speculation on which clearly the entire economy now depends).
Clearly these props of the US economy are not the result of unbridled technological competition giving rise to a new economy. They can't sustain the economy the way that 4 trillion govt debt once did. And they will be spent sooner (massive productivity and income gains can't be had by stock buy backs and fantasies about the value of business investment), leading to ever more slaughterous competition in depressed conditions domestically and internationally as authoritarian bosses demand ever more loyalty from the proles even as they display less loyalty in return.
It was the nature of the class system--not competition--that Seattle marked a partial recognition and repudiation of, though it's all been hijacked by Hoffa and the rest of Clinton's bodyguard proletariat.
Yours, Rakesh