But competition seems wholly dispensable. Or am I just so thoroughly socialized, I can't see that human society _requires_competition. Given the likelihood of the latter, anyone have any examples that might shatter my social dupeness **************
Well, if we lived in a sane society where production was carried out on the basis of use and need (beyond commodity production and the wages system) and people didn't try to qualify for a job mostly because they would get a higher price for doing it on the labour market (the old form of competition), we'd want to be able to train the people who were the most adept at doing certain skilled tasks. Let's say that there would only be a social need for a hundred more people to learn solar engineering. We've got 200 people who want to become qualified in that skill. They take a solar engineering test and those with the highest scores go on to study. The others try other things which they might be better at e.g. brain surgery or teaching math.
Best, Mike B)
===== ***************************************************************** "A man's maturity consists in finding once again the seriousness he had as a child at play."
Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (500 B.C.)
http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Shopping - with improved product search http://shopping.yahoo.com