[lbo-talk] Film Notes

Brian Siano siano at mail.med.upenn.edu
Thu Oct 23 10:54:29 PDT 2003


Charles Brown wrote:


>From: Brian Siano
>
>As I said: could you please describe an environment where competitiveness
>would _not_ occur?
>
>^^^
>CB: I'll have a go , in the spirit of cooperating with you, not competing
>with Miles :>)
>
>How about an environment where there is no scarcity , i.e. nothing to
>compete over ?
>
>
I don't mean this to slam you as much as I've slammed Miles. But I'd hoped that such an answer'd be a bit more concrete, rather than a speculation over scarcity and its role in competition.

But even so, I think a society without scarcity would change the nature of competition, rather than eliminate it. For exanple, even within affluent communities, there are elements of competition-- the private sort one has when on compares one's salary to that of one's neighbor, and the public sort over things like the kids' sports activities, having the newest model car, etc.

Granted, this arena of affluence happens _within_ a greater society of considerable inequalities in wealth. But it seems to me that people's measuring themselves against others, and the desire to be "better" than others, is something that's not going to go away. I wouldn't want it to be the basis of social organization, and I don't think it's the overwhelmingly primary motivation of human beings. But trying to reduce competitiveness in a society is like trying to reduce anger; it might be reduced, or channelled, but it won't b eliminated.


>In terms of a real, historical society of the future ( not an abstract
>"environment"), there might persist games of competition in "museums" which
>preserved our collective memory of the societies of the past, but these
>would not be competition over really important needs and wants. Sort of like
>who gets the most runs in a baseball game is not a really important, just
>kind of entertaining.
>
>
There's an echo of that in things like online gaming, and the modelling of historical conflicts. But it seems to me that even when conflict is resolved in non-violent avenues, competitiveness turns up-- in a court of law, for example.



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