What Is Competition?

I suspect that most people understand “competition” to mean a process in which more than one person wants an outcome that cannot be gained by everyone seeking it. This interpretation of competition follows that found in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which offers “rivalry” as the first definition and “contest among rivals” as the second. The Cambridge dictionary has a more aggressive definition: “a situation in which someone is trying to win something or be more successful than someone else,” and a competition is “an organized event in which people try to win a prize by being the best, fastest, etc.” The explicit implication of these definitions as well as the common-sense view is that in competition someone wins and most lose.

Econfakers reject this definition and all it implies. Where they dwell competition is quite different. First and foremost, it is an outcome, not a process. Second, and equally fundamental, it is not a rivalry in which a few win and most lose. It is continuous harmony of economic coexistence, a romantic dance to market forces.