Competition | Kevin Barrett's Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Competition’

A Thought About American Politics

Posted in Philosophy, Politics, Quotes, tagged Altruists, American Politics, Competition, Contests, E. O. Wilson, Groups, Philosophy, Quotes on June 3, 2025| 2 Comments »

Competing is intense among humans, and within a group, selfish individuals always win. But in contests between groups, groups of altruists always beat groups of selfish individuals.

— E. O. Wilson

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Click here (3 June) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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#47:DonTheFelon’s Administration Will Lead To U.S. Stagnation

Posted in Disclaimer, Economics, Politics, Quotes, tagged #DonTheFelon, A Free Market, American Dynamism Summit, Capitalism, Competition, Depreciation, Disclaimer, Dynamism, Fareed Zakaria, Fareed Zakaria GPS, Fareed's Take, Good Jobs, Higher Profits, Manufacturing, Philosophy, Politics, Protectionism, Quotes, Stagnation, Tax Credits, Trump Administration, Trump’s misguided push for a ‘manufacturing comeback’, Vice-President JD Vance on March 24, 2025| Leave a Comment »

The hard reality is that services is the fastest growing sector in the world economy, generating higher profits and good jobs.

The effort to revive manufacturing via protectionism is an effort to defy basic economics.

In a free market, people and countries are forced to specialize, moving to those things they can do best.

I quoted JD Vance earlier from a speech he gave at the American Dynamism Summit.

In it he explained that the Trump Administration would use tariffs to protect domestic industries, but he promised them lots of tax breaks and government support to innovate.

But the long history of capitalism tells us that countries and companies don’t innovate because of tax credits and depreciation.

They do so because of competition. That is why markets work. They force efficiency.

If you shield American companies and workers from competition, you will get not dynamism but stagnation.

— Fareed Zakaria
As presented on his TV show: “Fareed Zakaria GPS” (Global Public Square)
The video was found on CNN’s YouTube site – post titled: “Fareed’s Take: Trump’s misguided push for a ‘manufacturing comeback’“
The specific YouTube link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDtZLShib2E

Disclaimer: I am making no claim to ownership of this quote / excerpt. I am presenting this quote in support of the view espoused by Mr. Zakaria.

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Click here (24 March) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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And I Do Think About This A Lot

Posted in Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Competition, Daniel Craig, Philosophy, Quotes, Work on September 25, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I don’t say: ‘can’t do that’, ‘won’t do that’. I’ve never thought in that way about work. The genuine truth, and I do think about this a lot, is that I’m one of the least competitive people you’ll ever meet. Except with myself.

— Daniel Craig

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Click here (25 September) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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No Real Competition

Posted in Faith, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Carl Sagan, Competence, Competition, Faith, God, Lot, Lot's Wife, Philosophy, Quotes, The Bible on December 27, 2023| Leave a Comment »

You see, the religious people — most of them — really think this planet is an experiment. That’s what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen’s wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can’t say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can’t the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn’t want Lot’s wife to look back, why didn’t he make her obedient, so she’d do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn’t made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would’ve listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn’t he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why’s he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there’s one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He’s not good at design, he’s not good at execution. He’d be out of business if there was any competition.

— Carl Sagan

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Click here (27 December) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.

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Lessons

Posted in History, Philosophy, Quotes, tagged Anglo-Saxons, Biology, Competition, Due Process Of Law, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, History, Life, Nature, Philosophy, Quotes, Roman Catholic Church, Survival, The Lessons Of History, United States, War, Will and Ariel Durant on May 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

BIOLOGY AND HISTORY
So the first biological lesson of history is that life is competition. Competition is not only the life of trade, it is the trade of life — peaceful when food abounds, violent when the mouths outrun the food. Animals eat one another without qualm; civilized men consume one another by due process of law.
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War is a nation’s way of eating. It promotes co-operation because it is the ultimate form of competition. Until our states become members of a large and effectively protective group they will continue to act like individuals and families in the hunting stage.
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The second biological lesson of history is that life is selection. In the competition for food or mates or power some organisms succeed and some fail. In the struggle for existence some individuals are better equipped than others to meet the tests of survival.
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Nature loves difference as the necessary material of selection and evolution; identical twins differ in a hundred ways, and no two peas are alike.

Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, the weak relatively weaker, than before. Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes me unequally valuable to their group. If we knew our fellow men thoroughly we could select thirty percent of them whose combined ability would equal that of all the rest. Life and history do precisely that, with a sublime injustice reminiscent of Calvin’s God.

Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. Leave men free and their natural inequalities will multiply almost geometrically…
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Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom; and in the end superior ability has its way. Utopias of equality are biologically doomed, and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity. A society in which all potential abilities are allowed to develop and function will have a survival advantage in the competition of groups. This competition becomes more severe as the destruction of distance intensifies the confrontation of states.

The third biological lesson of history is that life must breed. Nature has no use for organisms, variations, or groups that cannot reproduce abundantly. She has a passion for quantity as prerequisite to the selection of quality; she likes large litters, and relishes the struggle that picks the surviving few; doubtless she looks on approvingly at the upstream race of a thousand sperms to fertilize one ovum. She is more interested in the species than in the individual, and makes little difference between civilization and barbarism. She does not care that a high birth rate has usually accompanied a culturally low civilization, and a low birth rate a civilization culturally high; and she (here meaning Nature as the process of birth, variation, competition, selection, and survival) sees to it that a nation with a low birth rate shall be periodically chastened by some more virile and fertile group.
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If the human brood is too numerous for the food supply, Nature has three agents for restoring the balance: famine, pestilence, and war.
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But much of what we call intelligence is the result of individual education, opportunity, and experience; and there is no evidence that such intellectual acquirements are transmitted in the genes. Even the children of Ph.D.s must be educated and go through their adolescent measles of errors, dogmas, and isms; nor can we say how much potential ability and genius lurk in the chromosomes of the harassed and handicapped poor. Biologically, physical vitality may be, at birth, of greater value than intellectual pedigree; Nietzsche thought that the best blood in Germany was in peasant veins; philosophers are not the fittest material from which to breed the race.
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In the United States the lower birth rate of the Anglo-Saxons has lessened their economic and political power; and the higher birth rate of Roman Catholic families suggests that by the year 2000 the Roman Catholic Church will be the dominant force in national as well as in municipal or state governments.

— Will and Ariel Durant
From their book: “The Lessons Of History, Chap.III“

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Click here (12 May) to see the posts of prior years. I started this blog in late 2009. Daily posting began in late January 2011. Not all of the days in the early years (2009-2010) will have posts.