When did "Competitiveness" become "God?"

[Tyler Durden]

We have this mantra now that when "companies compete, EVERYBODY wins."

John Nash would vomit.

What we HAVE is "King of the Mountain" played by sociopaths. Need I remind anyone that where there is "competition," there is ONE winner and EVERYONE ELSE LOSES, MORE OR LESS. On top of that, all of the "losers" now are going to try and knock off each other, AND the new "King of the Mountain" to "win" what crumbs are left.

This isn't reality; it's a stupid GAME. A comedian once wrote about a kid's game he used to play called "The Last Piece of Meat on Earth," where all the players would chase the guy with the last piece of meat and beat the living shit out of him to make him let it go, someone comes up with it, and the chase starts all over.

GEE, that sounds like FUN.

FUCK "Competitiveness." Try "COOPERATION."

[gmoney]

1. As Jim Hightower likes to say...

"When everybody does better, everybody does better."

Sort of the inverse of "a rising tide lifts all boats"

[LiberallyInclined]

5. "a rising tide lifts all boats..."

that statement has always bothered me, because- if the tide is rising in one place, it has to be going down somewhere else...but they never mention that.

[JHB]

10. Nor does it take notice of...

...all the people who don't have boats...

[Tyler Durden]

12. "A rising tide Drowns everyone..."

...except those rich enough to afford a boat."

Sounds more like real life to ME.

[Tyler Durden]

7. That is like saying:

"Getting one blueberry is better than getting no pie at all."

???????????????????????????????????????

[NVMojo]

2. The elites sold their dream to a whole lotta non-elites, made them

think they'd have a piece of the pie!!! Wait til it finally dawns on most of them!!

[Bozita]

4. That's why 14% of Americans think their income puts them in the top 1%

Drives me nuts.

[housewolf]

3. When short-term "corporate profits" became more important

than anything else.

That's the war we're in, as I see it - short-term corporate profits vs. people

[LiberallyInclined]

6. we're indoctrinated with competitiveness at an early age

it's the capitalist way- cooperation is for commies.

the whole competetion vs. cooperation thing is one that crosses my mind fairly frequently. it's the yin and yang of our culture- and the sooner we choose cooperation, the better off we'll be- but i doubt it will happen in any of our lifetimes. (barring a surprise visit from any wandering Vulcans.)

[JHB]

8. Sometime in the late 60s or early 70s...

...It congealed from a primordial ooze of Ayn Rand followers and was virgin-birthed by the Chicago School of Economics.

Some years later, after it's bar mitzvah, It drew some curves on Arthur Laffer's napkins, and later still was baptized in the waters of the River Mammon by its prophetfit, St. Ron the Gipper...
O8)

[Tyler Durden]

9. Why does ANYONE read "Swine" Rand??????

I read at a speed where I can knock out the "LORD OF THE RINGS" Trilogy in about 9-10 hours, but waste my time on THAT garbage??

If I want to read the meaningless rantings of a diseased sociopath, I'll re-read "Mein Kampf."

[sweetheart]

13. "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead"...

Are good fiction on the day when you're sick in bed with the flu. They
paint a surreal world of total economic incompetence injected with a
tiny few brilliant protagonists.

Rand is a victem of her own fiction... nothing more... but the books
are not bad, and quite good to know about.

It explains why the largest election systems company in the US is
HQ's on "John Gault St." in Nebraska.

[Tyler Durden]

15. Dunno. I view them like "Dyanetics" for rich people.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions" puts forth the propositions that we are only healthy to the extent that our ideas are humane, and that silly ideas can be MIND POISON when taken as gospel by the boderline deranged.

Ron Hubbard wrote fairly well: it doesn't make his IDEAS the equal of Socrates.

[sweetheart]

23. Searching for the philosopher kings

Perhaps no author is Plato's philosopher king, and even socrates, as
much as he was a wise and enlightened teacher, is only remembered in
the writings of plato, that surely distort by what he did not understand
of his beloved master.

So if we take all these books, even the bible, as nice literature, that
can provide some insight and background in to culture and other works,
it defuses the bomb. Ayn Rand was a victem of her own fiction. Her
romantic life did not coincide where her fiction, nor did her life for
that matter. She made some money and wrote some books, that can be
a real panty twist, were they to re-make the very erotic scene where
she gets shagged by the architect in the quarry.

So she's just a horny writer trying to scam a buck with some erotic
fiction, and anyone who attempts to build a temple on her mushy
foundation of bullshit'ism will only live to see it crumble.

[DanCa]

17. everything is becoming xenafied

I read at a speed where I can knock out the "LORD OF THE RINGS" Trilogy in about 9-10 hours, but waste my time on THAT garbage??

If I want to read the meaningless rantings of a diseased sociopath, I'll re-read "Mein Kampf."

Where living in a culture where everything is Xenafied. I dont think we can expect christianity to remain immune. I mean using the lord of the rings how many people are going to see the movie and think oh gee it's exactly like the book. Shame I really wanted to see the Scourging of the Shire and Tom B and Raghangnast (sp it's way too early) the brown)

[Tyler Durden]

18. They did a pretty good job...

Personally, I think leaving out Tom Bombadil was a stroke of genius.

[DanCa]

19. actually

I liked the movie ending better *ducks* I am a sucker for a happy ending.

[Tyler Durden]

14. LOVE your sig line, by the way.

What I say is, When you behave like a Romanov long enough, Someone will invent Bolshevics and then execute you and your entire family.

[JHB]

20. Thanks. It's my little way of reminding people...

...that there's more than one kind of capitalism, and the "free-market" kind incessantly pushed these days was not what built the sort of broad-based prosperity we saw after WW2. The mixed economy kind of capitalism (a regulated market economy with a few public institutions (post office, Social Security) or licensed monopolies (power, water, etc.) where universal coverage is needed, and stong protections for workers and the public) was.

A reminder that anyone who calls the New Deal "our socialist revolution" is the radical, not us.

A reminder, also, of your version, if things are allowed to get that bad.

[sweetheart]

11. Its a sign of degenerate militarism

gone too far. The military mind has only absolute victory as a standard,
as anything else is to die and be defeated. This brutal thinking is then
taken by militarists and imperialists in to other spheres and wrongly
applied.

JHB's got the history perfectly.

[JHB]

21. Thanks, then I'll hope you'll accept my dispute of your pinning it on...

..."the military mind". There is no singular such thing, and without further elaboration treats a whole lot of people unfairly. (In some quarters, what's wrong is the absence of certain "military" principles, like duty and loyalty down.) What's at work here is overweening, amoral greed, seeking no other purpose than its own advantage.

[sweetheart]

22. indeed, i should have said "wanton militarism"

The military mind indeed is loyal and great hearted. Rather when the
culture is so obsessed with fighting and war, that torture and gladiatorial
defeat in combat is so glorified, like barbarians with a blood lust for
more killing.... what i meant was rather that the culture has been
so shifted towards militarism, that this bloody rage has replaced the
concept of civil behaviour in commerce.

[Celebration]

16. duality

People who look at life in terms of duality-- saints vs. sinners, good vs. evil, winners vs. losers-- (get the pattern?) espouse versions of this. There is always tension between individualism and communal thinking-- extreme capitalism is an example of a religion, as is extreme socialism.