Economic Competition: Should We Care About the Losers

1
Economic Competition Should We Care About the
Losers?

• Johnathan Wolff

2
Economic Interests

• Thiefs who harm your economic interests must
  compensate you.
• Arsonists who harm your economic interests must
  compensate you.
• Those who defraud you and harm your economic
  interests must compensate you.

3
Competition

• Competition that harms your economic interests by
  underselling you is celebrated all over the
  world.
• Why?

4
Liberty

• One answer is that economic liberty is important.
• But generally freedom to cause harm is not
  celebrated.

5
Utilitarianism

• One response is that the utilitarian benefits
  outweigh the costs.
• But a good objection to utilitarianism is that
  you shouldnt be able to harm some for others
  benefit. Utilitarianism needs to be qualified.

6
Enjoyable

• Some might argue that competition is enjoyable
  and if it is not then one should stop.
• But he thinks that sometimes we have to compete
  to survive.

7
Attributes

• There are many kinds of competition.
• They all have a common scale on which performance
  is measured often correlated with some underling
  trait. Whoever achieves the highest score on the
  scale wins some kind of honor or prize.

8
Pure Lottery

• Pure lottery is a competition based on pure luck.
• For instance a coin toss is a lottery

9
Weighted Lottery

• Weighted lottery - Skill effort or other input
  tips the chances of winning in your favor.
• For instance a marathon.

10
Pure Competition

• Pure competition no value to the activity just
  to the competition.
• A bet on the color of the next car you see.

11
Constitutive Competition

• Constitutive competition activity exists only
  with competition.
• For instance, games.

12
Activity Enhancement

• Activity enhancement competition adds enjoyment
  to the activity that is already valued.
• For instance, sport.

13
Side-Effect of Activity

• Side effect of activity not intended but a
  consequence of acting in some ways.
• For instance, Tom Sawyer not having to paint the
  fence if he can get the other kids to compete in
  doing it. A ploughing competition or literary
  contest also has side effects.

14
Kids

• Consider a competition amongst kids to see who
  can get the tidiest room (for the prize of
  watching TV).
• May be weighted, may enhance activity, side
  effect is that the room gets clean without the
  parents cleaning it.

15
Benefits

• One might argue that we allow a competitive
  economy because the side effects are good if we
  compete via education to get jobs the general
  education level will rise, economy will benefit
  etc.

16
Moral Questions

• But that means we are encouraging people to take
  a large risk of loss, purely for the good it does
  others (554). Is this O.K.? It sounds
  exploitative. The goal (like in the ploughing
  case) has nothing to do with the competition.

17
Exploitation

• We exploit people when we use them for our own
  ends without sufficient regard for how they may
  be effected.
• He says we generally dont exploit. If our
  waitresses were slaves we wouldnt buy from the
  restaurant.

18
Goals

• Using people must be an essential element in
  achieving ones goals for one to be exploiting
  others.
• A drunk driver is negligent but not exploitative.
• The tiding parent wasnt exploitative she
  probably had her kids interests in mind.
• Nor as we set them out were the other examples
  clearly exploitative.

19
Kids Again

• If the parent had tried to get all the chores
  done with competition or didnt have her kids
  interests at heart she would have been
  exploitative.
• The other examples can be modified similarly.

20
Coercion

• To be exploited the person must be given an
  opportunity where the best option is low grade
  or is requires risk of harm.
• Consent doesnt guarantee that one wasnt
  exploited.

21
Benefits and Interest

• If the victims interests were sufficiently taken
  into account, there wasnt exploitation.
• If victims benefited then the system might not be
  as exploitative, but could still be exploitative.

22
Control

• If those who benefited had no control over the
  system then the beneficiaries were not to blame
  for the exploitation.

23
Valuable as

• Economic competition is usually valued as a
  weighted lottery but people can win by deceit,
  greed, and manipulation as well as hard work etc.

24

• It is not a pure lottery and it does not enhance
  inherently valuable activity.
• Nor is competition constitutively valuable for
  most people.

25
Side Effects

• Competition is primarily valued for its side
  effects low prices and high quality goods.
• Primarily we are concerned about those not in the
  competition benefiting from the competition.
• It is potentially exploitative.

26
Consumption

• If there is exploitation it is due to the
  consumer not giving due consideration to those
  who produce for them.
• Remember people dont actually have to be harmed
  to be exploited.

27
Excuses

• Of course producers are consumers too so they
  benefit from competition.
• However, collectively, we have a lot of control
  over the system (through voting and consumption).
• But we still need to take the producers
  interests into account.

28
Developing Countries

• Fortunately, developed countries have bankruptcy
  laws, working standards, and welfare systems.
• But what about those in developing countries.
• We buy from these people. Do we take their
  interests sufficiently into account?

29
Cheap Goods

• In fact our need for cheap goods explains the
  situation of many producers in the third world.
  Costs of production are lowest there.
• We need to think about where our goods are coming
  from and what we can do to avoid exploiting those
  who produce them.