Competition is why our modern standard of living is what it is. People seeking to do things better, faster and cheaper in order to make a buck (or even just for the bragging rights) in order to improve their own personal standard of living gives us electric lighting, oranges in February, the massive amount of infrastructure it takes to get this comment from my fingertips to your eyeballs and every other part of modern life you don't notice but would notice if it were missing. Yes there's externalities but at a societal scale we do a pretty decent job of playing whack-a-mole as they become critical.
> Competition is why our modern standard of living is what it is.
Yet you can say the exact same thing about cooperation. I would argue that cooperation is atleast as critical an ingredient here as competition. Indeed, the infrastructure that allows me to view the comment you posted depends on open standards, open source software and generally could not have existed without groups of people working together to accomplish goals.
I would personally say that cooperation, freedom and passion are more important than competition, greed and ego in terms of enabling the accomplishments of our society.
That is not to say that competition has no role to play, but it is part of a melange of human dynamics that are necessary. Specifically, competition works best between between groups of freely cooperating individuals, especially when those groups can periodically set aside that competition to cooperatively further the goals of their mutual passions and dreams.
I see what you're both getting at and to me it's a case of the life you want to live.
Ego isn't going away any time soon, and you will never know anyone who has renounced their ego, because only ego wants you to share that.
Competition can be a lot of fun, so that's ok. As long as it's not driven by jealousy or envy.
Greed - we all have psychological impulses that make us think that one thing is not enough and we need more of it. Most of us do that now through our careers. Including me, I'm still pushing for the bigger paycheck.
Greed and ego can easily be symptomatic of unstoppable freedom and passion. We sometimes call that perfectionism and it's a curse.
All in all, it's not as simple as it looks unless your ego tells you that it's actually that simple for you. In which case...
Of course they aren't mutually exclusive. Did you read where I acknowledge that competition is an important and useful dynamic? I just think that competition is fundementally less important than cooperation.
You also said "competition works best between between groups of freely cooperating individuals", but why? What's wrong with competing alone? It's still coeperation on a societal scale, e.g competing as an individual in a competition is still co-operating with the competition itself.
Nothing rong, per se, but there are limits to what individuals can do on their own. When you eliminate groups of cooperating individuals, there are much lower limits to what can be accomplished. Specifically when taking about the achievements of society, most enterprises require the efforts of cooperating groups. I feel like this is blatantly evident and doesn't require explanation.
> It's still coeperation on a societal scale, e.g competing as an individual in a competition is still co-operating with the competition itself.
I think you are mangling the definition of 'cooperation" here. It certainly is possible to compete and cooperate simultaneously (often by strictly limiting the scope of the competition and by sharing knowledge), but that doesn't mean that competing is cooperation. Even so, within that "societal scale" competition, the best results are achieved by groups that operate with either no or greatly limited internal competition.
> but that doesn't mean that competing is cooperation
If you take part in a competition, you are cooperating with its organisers in making the event happen.
> there are much lower limits to what can be accomplished
We are talking about small achievments though, e.g opening a brewery.
If I read a book about that, am I cooperating with its author? If not, plenty is possible without cooperation; If so, lots can be achieved via indirect cooperation.
