Competition

Is competition desirable? is it inevitable? is it a "natural" law?
Competition as a virtue seems to be one of the central pillars of "free market" economics. Since competition motivates us to do a lot of work, produce a lot of "goods", and consume a lot as well, it's really great according to the economists' definition of happyness. The more you consume, the happier you are. The more medicine you drink, the healthier you are.

But there are some other results of competition as well. It leads to discontent. It makes you jealous. It drives out other feelings like love, compassion, distorts our sense of justice. Overall, it has a lot of undesirable direct and indirect effects on us. Unfortunately, however, these things are not studied by economists. It's almost as if they don't matter at all in the "larger" scheme of things.

The survival of the fittest was a theory for evolution of species. But now it is being applied to the theory of social organisation. It is being used to justify ruthless competition as a virtue. For many, it has become an "obvious fact". Nothing is more deceptive than an obvious fact. And we are obsessed with a million facts. Whatever doesnt fall into the category of "fact" becomes "myth"!! A relevant question to ask is, who decides what is fact and what is myth? From this question stems the tag-line of modern society: "knowledge is power".