OnlySubs Episode 17: Wokeness and the Dark Side of Competition is now available exclusively for New Discourses contributors on the following platforms:
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A long time ago, watching people in my local community engage in business in a rather limited market, I observed a fact about competition that has stuck with me ever since. There’s a light side to it, and there’s a dark side. The light side is something I’ve referred to as “positive competition” ever since, and the dark side is “negative competition.” The idea is simple: positive competition occurs when people improve themselves to outcompete their competitors, and negative competition is when they try to put down their competition to lower their competitors’ perceived relative value instead. When we hear liberals and capitalists talk about how their systems produce positive-sum results where the tides rise and all ships are raised, they’re referring to the fact that positive competition creates a positive-sum feedback loop where everything improves, even the losers. The opposite happens and everything starts to fall apart. In this episode of James Lindsay OnlySubs, my subscribers-only podcast, I explain these two ideas and how Wokeness is designed to rationalize and justify a certain particularly unfortunate type of negative competition. The results will be predictable. At the end, I wrap up by encouraging you to find ways to tap into the positive-sum drive to take up positive competition and discourage negative competition wherever you see it. Don’t give in to the temptation of the dark side!
Previous episodes of OnlySubs can be found here.
1 comment
This reminds me of my reaction to the phrase “disruptive innovation”. I see it as a play on words, where the disruption of sales of an existing project by a new, innovative product is confused with disruptive tactics, such as burning down a competitor’s building in order to sabotage their efforts. The first is progressive innovation and benefits the entire community, not only the innovator. The second is actually disruptive in the common meaning of the word and benefits only the saboteur. I can think of other examples, except this particular one comes to mind.
I believe that this has an analogy in terms of discourse and the public exchange of ideas. The disruptive style of debate that is becoming more prevalent in society is based more on attempting to interfere with others presenting their viewpoints or trying to mischaracterize them, rather than presenting a more compelling version of your own ideas. I believe that if we would like the public to make a more informed decision following a debate, then we should strive for a more informative style of debate.