Winners are grinners, but how much competition is too much?

Competition is great. We all have been brought up hearing mantras like ‘survival of the fittest’, ‘winner are grinners’ and ‘may the best man win’.

• In the workplace and on the sporting field winners are rewarded, whether it is with money, a medal, a promotion, or even just praise. Winners are celebrated. In recent years, there has been some backlash against this ‘win at all costs’ attitude.
• There are times when we need to be more conventional and to follow orders without question. There are times when it is more productive to be relentlessly focused on moving forward, even to the point of being unforgiving of mistakes.
• Competitiveness comes under the cluster of aggressive defensive behaviour. At the extreme end of this scale, individuals don’t just desire to win, they feel a compulsion to win at all costs. These are the people who are willing to risk everything in order to be right. They will put themselves, their teams and their families in precarious situations to avoid failure or the possibility of losing.
• Many of the successful people we admire are driven and unrelenting, single-mindedly focused on reaching the top, sometimes to the point of forgetting the people around them. These people set the bar high and don’t let anyone take advantage of them. They can always be relied upon to be 100% focused on getting the job done.
• If being competitive got us to where we are, is there such a thing as too much competition? And if so, how much is too much?
• Competitiveness and the relentless need to win, to do better, to be better is causing us stress and is ultimately killing us. This need to win and be better is also not making us happy.
• Stress puts strain on our health, our families, our children, our marriages and even our careers. Stress, a leading contributor to heart disease, is an inevitable result of continuously pushing ourselves to outdo each other in work and in life generally. With one Australian dying of cardiovascular disease every 12 minutes, removing stress from our lives is more important than ever.
• Our children are pressured to be better students, to look more attractive, to get more likes, retweets and followers, to go viral. Much of the time, they are competing against people they have never even met. Plastic surgery is increasingly popular. For women alone, the rates of plastic surgery have grown 538% since 1997. This is directly related to the competitive desire to be skinnier, younger and prettier.
• Divorce rates are also increasing because our spouses aren’t sexy, romantic, sensitive or fun enough. Social media suggests that everyone else has these amazing relationships, so we should too.
• In the workplace, employee satisfaction is decreasing, in part because it has become less acceptable to be content with simply doing a good job. Instead we are supposed to be continually focused on the next promotion, the next role or that next big bonus.
• This competitiveness means that we can’t be happy when a colleague does well; instead, we turn a critical eye on ourselves to work out why we aren’t doing as well, or we look outwards to others we might blame for our lack of success.
• Employee tenure is dropping as all of us strive to be better than one another. More of us are looking for the next best thing. The grass is always greener, there is always someone to surpass, another promotion to get, another business to start or to buy.
• Bigger cars, buffer bodies, more money… This non-stop drive to be and to have the best in everything is simply unsustainable. Something has to give.
• How do we find the right balance? How much competition is enough and how much is too much? Now I know that what I saw as a strength – competitive nature – becomes a weakness when it is taken to its extreme. It causes stress, physical exhaustion and an inability to be proud of what I have achieved. I am always chasing the next milestone, the next challenge.
• I also know that when I manage to balance my competitive drive it becomes the key to my success. Finding the balance isn’t easy but I recognize that it’s essential in order to be successful over the long-term, at the same time as maintaining my physical, emotional and mental health.

Each of us needs to find our own answer to how this necessary balance might look for us. So, how much competition is too much for you?

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Public policy implemetation

Conservatives are always scary about the increase in the size and scope of government. If the pitfalls and costs of implementation were properly understood, many policies would not be authorized, no matter how well intentioned. Recognize that central programs must be implemented locally. Implementation costs money and money is especially important politically when tax payers are in revolt.

Conservatives distrust governmental authority and wish to minimize the scope and cost of governmental activities. They are inherently suspicious of governmental bureaucracy. Liberals propose public policy solutions to a wide range of social problems, often ignoring the questions of the feasibility of implementation. Keep the government's hands off. Let the local level control and implement policy wherever feasible. Minimize and localize the activities of government and the scope of public policy. A policy may face unforeseen problems and must come with enough flexibility to allow government to change the course.

This is how governmental programs should be put into effect: 

1. When in doubt, stay out.
2. If something must be done, understand the behavioral dynamics and change the rules of the game without spending money.
3. Hire a private contractor and do not try to produce the good or service directly through government. 
4. When government must finance something, make sure that the money goes directly to the beneficiaries, not through indirect channels.
5. If government must finance and administer, competition must be permitted as a yardstick to gauge success and cost.
6. When government must obtain resources, it should purchase them in markets.
7. When government produces a good or service, it should, when possible, charge the users a pro rated cost, not give away the good or service free of charge.
8. Only as a last resort, when all the above has failed, should government finance, administer, and deliver the good or service free of charge.

Increased governance stresses the cost of government. And taxes depress other forms of spending, such as consumption and investment. A public policy will necessarily spend money, and money is central to this subject. 

Any policy is as good as it is administered

Authoritarian regime of Modi believes in majoritarianism and not secular at all. Ambedkar has rightly described as 'democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil, which is essentially undemocratic'. Opaqueness in administration is increasing and none of the principles of democracy are being followed by Modi regime and institutions are getting reduced to nothing. None of the above rules are being followed in public policy administration. Whims are in the forefront.

Competition or Cooperation?

Which works better, competition or cooperation? 
The answer, without equivocation, is cooperation.

• Yet big business, the educational system, the health-care community, and most parents continue to encourage competition, almost totally neglecting the power of cooperation. 
• Unabated competition may be costing billions of dollars in sales and overall decreases in human achievement. 
• Too much competition may cause poor health. 
• We continue to hold the belief that competition is the royal road to success.
• While competition brings out the "beast" in us, cooperation brings out the "best" in us. 
• Cooperative scientists tend to have published more articles than their competitive colleagues. Cooperative business people have higher salaries. Cooperative students have higher grade point averages. Cooperation increases creativity. Unfortunately, most people are not taught cooperative skills. 
• A classroom teacher indirectly fosters competition. Yet people learn best when they work cooperatively with each other. Children who experience this type of learning at an early age carry it with them as they mature.
• More students feel good about themselves as learners when they cooperate. Their self-esteem goes up, they have a better sense of community, belonging, and acceptance. 
• Too much unsupported emphasis is placed on competition. The means by which individuals once learned cooperative skills are eroding.
• There are a lot of reasons to worry.  Some of the standard ways that people once learned to cooperate are not operating as they did a generation ago. Teaching young people how to cooperate does not receive the appropriate level of interest. As a result, competition breeds unabated. Few are teaching, practicing, or promoting a better idea.
• It is preferable to work with the school system. That way the next business generation could be taught how to be cooperative and influence corporate's. Once people experience cooperation, they find out that it's a better, even easier way.
• Cooperation has an impact on individuals working together in several key areas. It create a more fluid leadership and allows everyone to participate actively without fear of censure. Cooperation also has an impact on an individual's perception of the work environment. 
• Cooperation does much more than help people get along. Cooperative individuals adjust better, psychologically and physically healthier than their more competitive colleagues. 
• Competition, or the constant feeling that you have to work against something, has unhealthy physical side effects. Cooperation, and other pro-social/unselfish behaviors, tend to have positive side effects.
• Evidence suggests that cooperation generates a type of "runner's high." Like those individuals who exercise regularly, people who are cooperative and help others also experience a type of "high," which might better be described as calmness or sense of freedom from stress. This cooperation, not competition, is preferred. 
• Individuals who develop a cooperative stance feel more in control of their lives and do not live for approval from others. They tend to feel good in sharp contrast to the constant intensity of the competitive individual.
• Too much of a good thing can be a problem. In the case of cooperation, too much can lead to group-think, yes-man syndrome, or inappropriate conformity. 
• Caught up in cooperation they lose a critical respect for the issue, they can all decide to do the wrong thing unanimously. 
• Although a cooperative environment increases the number of ideas, improves the quality of the outcome, and facilitates a better working environment, cooperation must be done in such a way as to protect the integrity of the project at hand. Simply put, cooperation is the rule, but objectivity must be maintained. 

There are ways to facilitate cooperation, and they are the same no matter the environment, from big business to sports. 

• Focus on doing well. 
• Allow ample time. 
• Use similar language. 
• Share leadership. 
• Learn cooperative problem-solving tools. 
• Practice reciprocity.  
• Share resources and information. 
• Reinforce team efforts. 
• Act cooperatively. 
• For your health's sake, experience cooperation. 

Cooperation is a valuable commodity and works best when it is freely given and indirectly encouraged.  It promotes goodwill toward men and women, and is a gift that is always appropriate. And there's no better time to be cooperative.  After all, it is the season. 

Supporters of the current free-market economy argue that competition among producers ensures efficiency and keeps prices as low as possible. This argument sounds reasonable in theory, but in practice it sidelines workers and delivers much of the productive economy into the hands of a minority. The side effect is that while profits are privatized, risk is socialized while rich becomes richer and poor remains poor. On other hand, an economy based on cooperation will narrow the gap between rich and poor, and ultimately eradicate poverty.

Hostile cooperation is what exists between competitors who often cooperate with each other for greater rewards. A moderated desire to cooperate is natural and healthy. Those with non-cooperative natures would have very low survival rates. It is for this reason that people take a healthy enjoyment in belonging to a group, practicing teamwork, helping others, etc. War is an obvious example of deadly competition. In our competitive economy, those who lack the skills, education, talent or opportunity to compete will become poor. And the poor suffer from death rates that are at least six times higher than the rich. 

Most competitive situations are highly stressful; the possibility of failure creates agitation and anxiety. The fear or anger generated from being eliminated or losing often causes embarrassment, tension and hostility. Cooperative activities are non-threatening and non-judgmental. As a result, this creates an atmosphere for relaxation and well being, the foundation for more genuine, healthy and playful fun.

If lion runs slower than deer, lion will starve to death. 

If deer runs slower than lion, deer will get killed.

My View:
But imagine what it would be like to live in a society where each individual competes against everyone else, without any cooperation at all. In a perfectly competitive world, only the strongest or luckiest would survive. After killing off most of society, you would only find yourself among survivors who were highly competent killers themselves. And even if you emerged the final victor, the rewards would be slight. Society should never allow any one to grow and operative in no competition zone, under any circumstances.

Gandhi on providence and greed

• In a place like India, people affected by large-scale industrial projects like mining are told that they must pay the price for the nation to progress. Gandhi fundamentally rejected this as immoral.
• Co-operation, Gandhi argued, not competition, is the natural state of mankind. The same is true for our economic system.
• How you make your money in the first place is more important than how much you give away.
• Whatever you generate is never fully yours because it's going to be there long after you. In essence, you are only its caretaker. Clinging to material wealth is therefore a redundant pursuit.
• Not everyone has wealth-generating capabilities. Those that do are somehow better endowed, therefore, which means that they have more responsibility. It's directed to individual entrepreneurs, but the same could be said for companies too.
• Business produces wealth within a social, political and cultural context. All wealth is public in some essential way because it wasn't generated it in a vacuum. A very Gandhian idea.
• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed, said Gandhiji. So long as we cooperate with the cycle of life, the soil renews its fertility indefinitely and provides health, recreation, sustenance and peace to those who depend on it. But when the ‘predatory’ attitude prevails, nature’s balance is upset and there is an all-round bio-logical deterioration.
• Utilitarian precept of  “the greatest good of the greatest number” is a hopelessly unrealistic ideal since some people are incorrigibly greedy and we live in a dog-eat-dog world of scarce resources and the devil take the hindmost. 
• But the problem is that the Earth cannot provide for everyone’s greed and their needs, then there is a hope of solving the problem by enough people curtailing their greed enough, provided (a) no one else’s greed is infinite and (b) the number of people becomes reasonably stable (unlike in the last eighty years, when it has doubled every two or three generations).
• A man who is poor will continually examine himself and find out what are the superfluous things he keeps for himself, and, if you conduct yourself in a sportsman like spirit from day to day, you will be astounded at the fewness of things you require.
• Excessive greed for anything is the root of all evil.
• I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil – man’s greed. Will America, England etc continue to exploit the so-called uncivilized races and hope to attain peace that the whole world is pining for? Will Americans continue to engage in commercial rivalries and yet expect to dictate peace to the world?
• Peace can be precluded by intense commercial rivalries (for, say, access to raw materials) and by an aspiration of one nation to “dictate peace” to the others on terms favoring itself in the rivalries. These are hardly the only causes of war, but they are substantial.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need 

but not enough for every man’s greed ... Mahatma Gandhi

My View:

Gandhi's views even though appear logical and equitable but is a misfit in today's racing world. No one is willing to wait for others to catch up. Gandhian views have reportedly produced over 1000 PhD's in western world but are never practiced or adopted. In the words of Prof. Amartya Sen "Gandhi has relevance only in academics". If anybody talks about Gandhi's ideals he will be looked at as insane person and gets isolated. Like communism, Gandhism stands irrelevant today.