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- Title
How Competition Goes Wrong.
- Authors
McMURTRY, JOHN
- Abstract
ABSTRACT The article begins by identifying a set of hitherto undisclosed contradictions of meaning and value attributed to a basic structure of our existence-competition. It seeks to resolve these contradictions by showing that there are two basic forms of competition not previously distinguished: (1) the dominant model of competition in which pay-offs extrinsic to the activity itself are conferred on one party at the expense of others; and (2) the submerged, spontaneous form of competition in which no structure of extrinsic and exclusionary pay-offs is imposed on the action. Illustrating in terms of a paradigm example, ice-hockey, the analysis shows that the well-known and systematic pathologies of competitive conflict-violence, cheating, authoritarianism, sexism, drug-taking and so on-are a law-like consequence of the dominant structure of competition and not a problem of competition as such.
- Publication
Journal of Applied Philosophy, 1991, Vol 8, Issue 2, p201
- ISSN
0264-3758
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1468-5930.1991.tb00282.x