Competition and Excellence
From
Ilya Shambat@21:1/5 to
All on Fri Oct 21 01:54:30 2022
A Christian priest-politician once said that competition produces excellence.
My response: It’s not the only thing that does.
I was once with a woman named Julia. Julia spent a lot of years as a stay-at-home wife, where she did not have to face market competition. However she very much did pursue excellence. She swam. She worked out. She took classes in martial arts. Here was
someone who pursued excellence on her own accord even though she did not have to.
Now there were many people under the Soviet system who used the reprieve from competition afforded them by the Soviet system to veg. There were others though who were motivated achievers. They were called Stakhanovites. These people worked hard, even
though they didn’t have to, because they believed in the value of hard work. They made things happen when nobody else was willing to make things happen.
If the only way that someone can be motivated to excel is through competition, then fine, have him compete. But do not force that on everyone else. There are any number of reasons why someone might excel, and it is important to figure out what works for
whom.
In my case, I hate competing, but I am very willing to work hard. I take on projects that nobody else is working on, and in doing so I make bigger contributions than I did when I competed.
So that while competition may in fact lead to excellence, it is in no way the only thing that does. In many cases it not only fails to lead to excellence but in fact leads to malfeasance. The people who are motivated by other things than competition are
forced to abide by a code that contradicts their motivational structure, turning them into rebels. And the world fails to benefit from that state of affairs one bit.
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