Thursday, September 20, 2007

Choice, diversity and competition

Choice is bad, diversity is good, competition is evil. And the sooner people learn to differentiate between them, the better.

Competition

Competition is defined by sociologists as the willful destruction of your adversaries. Competition is making other people lose. It is anti-social and psychopathic.

Economic competition on a large scale is economic warfare. The victims' bodies (bankrupt businesses) litter the landscape to be picked clean by vultures (called consumers by biologists).

Diversity

Diversity is good because it allows people to use whatever is most closely suited to their needs. If you have a range of numbers from 5 to 10 then none of them are particularly close to 5900. If you increase the range of numbers available to between 0.005 and 10,000 then you'll likely get something much closer to 5900. The same goes for products in general. Diversity adds value, so long as it's actually made use of.

Choice

Choice is a cost, not a value. Nobody wants to choose between three different sizes of toothpaste or 4 different brands of Whitening Toothpaste. Choices impose costs on people, the cost of choosing. Something which is definitely a cost since it is not enjoyed and is avoided wherever possible. It's the reason why people develop routines. The reason they take the same seat in the meeting room after the break. To avoid choosing.

So competition for the sake of competition is evil. Too much diversity that forces an overload of choices on people is evil. And meaningless choices that don't add to diversity are evil too.

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