Is Competition Ethical?

I got the idea to begin this thread after scanning through the first two pages of thread titled “Will machines completely replace all human beings?”

my conclusion:
There is no greater threat than competition because competition will eventually drive out ANY form of competition. A threat because if unable to assess rightfully the situation we are today faced with, an unprecedented upheaval must be expected. We are about to find out why Darwinism does not, never did, apply humans.

To answer this question, one has first to ask: is chasing money and wealth accumulation the sole purpose of Life?

Unfortunately it is too late to replace ‘money printed out of thin air’ with currencies backed by intrinsic values such as gold and silver. Our economic paradigm began to inexorably contract with the Information Age, the invention of the computer. What seems to have worked out for millennia, isn’t really as it seems as the model has also greatly improved the ‘art of killing’ on a massive scale.

However, the Information Age has also allowed man’s creativity to surpass itself, it is the main drive propelling technology, and by technology it is meant Robotics essentially. Robotics is a trend that many still regard as science fiction or associate with awesome gadgets. This perception shifts somehow their lack of concern about what is merely ten to fifteen years ahead and will impose upon societies unprecedented shock waves. The only way to avoid the latter is to declare the Information Age as anti-humanitarian but how realistic is it? Can we block the advance of Knowledge itself when societies already rely so much on computerization? Achieving this would send us back to a late 1800’s lifestyle, prior the Industrial Revolution.

The advance of Robotics will affect everybody, from the factory worker to the surgeon as machines will eventually become smart enough to take over their tasks. With the rise of Artificial Intelligence, computers will self-build, and this means that even software programmers, engineers and decision makers will not have a job anymore. The media industry is already close to become entirely digitalized and at some point, virtual characters will replace today actors and TV anchors. Considering this very near future environment, what is exactly the future of money?.. AND competition?

Ending this erroneous perception implies the end of money as we know it. Life itself comes to a zero sum game which can no longer be passed onto the next generations. The market exists as an illusion, or delusion, that society can cheat this very zero sum game. More Knowledge does not lead to more wealth but less materialism.

The metaphysics of competition and
The end of money as we know it
celinek.net/empathmoney.html

There is no greater threat than non-competition.

Competition and capatilism is good. Monopolies are anti-captilism, they prevent competition and growth.
A super AI would be anti-competition and anti-capatilist, there would be no way to compete with it, it would be an overpowering monopoly of talent.

Therefore, competition is inherently good. As long as the poor are fed, given a basic welfare, and there is no need to war for oil, competition is good. Free energy is a money making machine…the reason we don’t have it are OIL TYCOONS who don’t like competition.

Without competition, people don’t do their best, and when people don’t do their best we are left with dilapidation and mediocrity.

how do you expect resolving the competition equation when robotics and megacomputers will have taken over all jobs. Did you read how I came to this rational conclusion? Or maybe do you plan to advocate for a fixed income for all when that happens and which is a mere 10-15 years ahead? A jobless future is unavoidable, in the store for us all.

Silicon Valley gets five foot tall robot security guards
Read more: dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ … z3yNUyDeGu

All paradigms come to an end, eventually

duplicate

You don’t really think that’ll happen do you? At any given moment there are as many other jobs that need to be filled as there are jobs that are taken by machines. Youd simply have a shitload of people out of a job once some machine was developed to do the work. But never would this happen on a sudden, vast scale. You won’t just wake up one day and find the world taken over by machines. and there are natural checks and balances between man and machine. I don’t think youll ever see a major unemployment problem because of machines. nah, it would have to happen very fast… science fiction movie fast.

Your argument was built on unsolid grounds. It said competition is unethical. That is false, competition is good and ethical.

However, the result of prolonged competition, may lead to monopolies, which is unethical. It is not that competition is unethical, it is that competition, without certain boundaries, can lead to monopolies. It is the monopolies, the uncompetition that is unethical.

We do not say that drinking water is unethical. We must drink water to thrive. However, we inevitably have to piss. We don’t say that water is undesirable, we don’t say we must get rid of the water. We must get rid of the piss (monopolies)!

The best way is pro-active, not reactive. We make sure that AI is carefully programmed, and if it isn’t, we must revolt against it.

chinese are replacing their cheap work force with robots already… but we/you ought to understand that even if it doesnt happen overnight, it will create a severe deflationary environment for sure that will leave many without a job during the transition ending with the take over.

moreover, the global financial conditions are so leveraged that when the robotics factor really sets in, we’ll be sent into a tail spin.

“The take over”

By Chinese robots? Orientsentinals?

Maybe, but watch what the Chinese government will do with those unemployed. Put them to work somewhere else.

And think of all the money that could be saved and made by using orientsentinals instead of people.

the main drive behind robotics are precisely our leveraged economies making humans’ salaries unattractive. So we got so dangerously leveraged because of competition itself to start with. Something to chew on.

my point is to let the system go as a whole. It is not fixable

How can you say that Darwinism doesn’t apply to humans? Are you talking about how we evolved or where our evolution is headed–as in, we’re going to destroy everything on the planet?

The image of a global post-apocalyptic waste land is certainly a real possibility, but life will go on. We may convert the global environment into one which is incredibly hostile to life, but life always finds a way (that is the essence of evolution). I have no doubt that microbes will survive (maybe not all but some). I’ll bet certain kinds of animals and plants will evolve that have found ways to adapt to the new environment. They will be rare but it’s a HUGE planet. There will always be some life that squeeks by.

What has? Computers? They’ve improved, or sped up, almost every facet of life.

Also, you began this statement by talking about the evolution of money. How did you jump from that to computers?

Why the information age specifically? Why not the electronic age? Why not the scientific age? Why not the industrial age? These all gave way to the world as it is today. Information, electronics, science… these are all just tools. It’s those who use them who are anti-humanitarian depending on how they use them. A knife in the hand of a killer will be used to harm, but that same knife in the hand of a surgeon will be used to heal. If there’s any hope of turning around this gloomy future on the horizon, it will be done with information, with computers.

According to the scenario you just painted, there won’t be money any longer… or competition. Machines will be built to serve our every need–to harvest food for us, to irrigate water, to build shelter, to entertain, to manage society; they won’t need any form of motivation like money. They will simply be programmed to carry out these functions. And if your prediction is right that they will eventually be built to take care of themselves–maintaining themselves, building replicas of themselves, repairing themselves, modifying themselves if need be, then no one at all will ever have to be paid to do these things. The machines themselves will have no reason to compete–they will be programmed to cooperate together in order to serve us–and we will have no reason to compete because everything will be handed to us on a silver plater.

Now, there will probably still be rudamentary forms of competition and bartering amongst humans–unless you expect humans to disengage in any form of social interaction whatsoever–but assuming we still maintain something of a social life amongst ourselves, there will still be subtle semblences of forms of mutual manipulation, mutual forms of one person trying to motivate another person to do as the first wishes–this can culminate in a form of bartering–if you do this for me, I’ll give you that–but it would take a lot for a full blown economic system based on money to evolve from that, especially with the machines always in our midst taking care of our every need.

This also assumes the machines will not be used for war (at least not against humans), or at least that somehow they will get to a stage when any wars between themselves and/or us has ceased. Now, conceivably you could have a scenario where there are two or more human tribes or nations at war with each other, but it’s only the machines going to war against other machine. And several layers behind the front lines would be servant robots who, just as in the last scenario, take care of our every need and reassure us that the soldier robots in the front lines are keeping the enemy at bay, and that we need but to relax, enjoy being served, and not worry.

How so? Because we’re all out of a job? Are you imagining this as a catastrophe? Like my scenario above about being served hand on foot by the robots is not what’s going to happen?

thanks for taking so much time to reply my OP, but if you go to the link, I am in fact advocating for doing what we really thrive for, out of passion, since the concept of money will be soon obsolete. I do not regard technology as evil but the mindset that fails to adapt to the new paradigm.

Yes Darwin has greatly influenced academia, especially monetary science and free market theories (the fittest help society prosper), but when able to assess the facts, it is obvious that competition itself that led us to this impasse. My point is that any society that endorses competition as a framework will eventually self-extinct. We have many societies that went through this and I find it kinda discombobulating that the consensus keeps embracing the same faulty paradigms always leading to a devolution.

To me evolution of the human species means to learn the lessons of the past. One cannot address a problem with the same mindset that created it. Darwinism doesnt apply humans because following the path of knowledge demands to grasp the meaning of creation, which is not a concern for animals.

My whole column is in fact a call for a differently interpretation of the odds we are faced with to avoid DEvolution.

War is also the syndrome of competition, recently I read that pentagon poured 15billon dollars in AI driven weaponry. I firmly believe that this competitive dualism - rulers vs masses - has to go, or we wont make it as a species.

everything will be handed to us on a silver plater? Nope, many will still be working (but do what we are really interested in) and possibly exchange favors BUT without the competitive aspect. For example, 3D printing will be improved and allow everybody to design his/her own clothing, furniture, etc. When the competition aspect is removed, society can finally becomes truly creative and for sure more peaceful.

Look at the picture today, 80% hate their jobs, financial shenanigans rule the planet, war for natural resources and privatization of the latter, etc. the list is very long. Competition?

we are at crossroads, really.

No, competition in reality isn’t ethical but since morals or ethics are both imaginary and transactionary nobody seems to really care.

how can you compete when at least 80% have no jobs since big business will resort to robotics and megacomputers?

Profits are based on planned obsolescence, buy low sell high. How can you have a system that produced EXACTLY what is consumed when profits are involved. Today global food waste amounts to 50% of production. Morality starts first by accepting that ruling the world for the sake of profits/power is the direct result of competition. Competition will forever prompts collusion and corrupts voluntaryism in humans, people do things they hate for the sake money.

look for Peter Joseph and his theory of resource based economies on youtube.

Don’t worry about it. The world is getting ready to destroy itself and we’ll be lucky if our living standards go back two hundred years instead of a thousand in the process.

Mine have already been set back about 200 years, minimal heat circulation in the house and I have to manually flush the toilet, so…

Disappointing post.

Non-competition cannot be a threat. It can be a symptom of threat, but it cannot be a threat itself. This should be obvious.

If you cannot do your best without a competition, then this is not an argument for competition, but an argument against the individual. These are very lame excuses you have.

The individual must possess the capacity to resist all of his natural inclinations. Without this, the individual becomes a hedonist destined to blame the wrong causes.

It has, unfortunately, become popular among the barbarians to blame all the problems on the lack of competition, as if our world isn’t full of it. The problem with these people is that they are completely dominated by the instinct of savagery. They are inferior on multiple levels. First, they are inferior because they possess such instincts, and second, they are inferior because they do not possess the means to overcome them. As such, they interpret their problems in a way which appears completely ridiculous to people like me.

people will rather accept self-defeat and/or shift the blame instead of acknowledging their own participation in such a false premise.

Granted, we all participate in the social inequality, tyranny, enslavement, ritual mass murder, and general inequities of civilization as a whole. Tell me, are your hands any more cleaner than mine?

The genius of human improvising is embedded within the need to overcome all obstacles. As conceivable it is to predict a future bereft of jobs that robots can not do, it is equally believable to envision of a hierarchy of beings, way down the line. Robots will
be ruled by androids, which will be overseen by cyborgs. The hierarchies of evolved beings will make sure that competition become a fair deal, each according to his need and capacity. Boundaries will always pre set any competitive conflict. Competition will always be cleared of malfeasance by the need to carry on the tasks of existence. I think we may be going down the wrong road by assuming an economic singularity paralleling a social psychological one. The former has become determinant over the latter, not the other way around, and the view, that only the rich may be able to afford cyborg-ship, may be really a coup-de-grace.

I still need gas for my truck, so I silently support the upcoming oil crash, though I dont fool myself. But what I essentially meant is that I seldom come across people who easily acknowledge that social competition is at the core of our ills, most will rather accuse politics, banks, the war machine. monsanto, etc. They have problems with connecting the dots and change the way they think.

so far I have removed myself as much as I could from the system: off the grid house sitting, landscaping, farming during summer time, and traveling, writing and hope this year to land a few radio shows as a guest speaker, we’ll see. I used to live in the big apple, working for law firms into international settlement doing translations and in 2009, I left everything behind.