Is Wholefoods "Conscious Capitalism" Effective Altruism?

Wholefoods, one of the most consciously ethical companies in the world, was picketed by animal rights activists in 2003. At first, CEO John Mackey was incensed. After all, Wholefoods are the good guys! Couldn't these would-be revolutionaries take their complaints to McDonalds or Walmart?

After some reflection Mackey, the libertarian author of Conscious Capitalism (2013), decided that it might not be a bad idea to sit down with the activists and hear what they had to say. Asking them, “Why did you attack us?” he received the rather touching response: “Because we thought you would listen. Nobody else will.” 

As a consequence, Wholefoods made the decision to undertake a long and wide-ranging ethical review of how they sourced their meat. In meetings spanning months, they consulted experts in farming, sustainability, animal welfare, economics and lord knows who else. They brought ranchers together with animal rights activists and scientists and worked collectively on establishing objective standards to measure animal welfare. Ultimately, they were able to significantly improve the living standards of the animals they sell. Mackay himself was motivated by what he learned to go vegan.

 

Mackey is extremely keen to rehabilitate the image that capitalism has, especially among young people who tend to perceive the market economy as cutthroat, exploitative and alienating. He believes the perception that businesses as driven entirely by the “selfish” profit motive is partly responsible for capitalism’s poor standing. He is eager to help people understand that business enriches lives, and fears that unless we rehabilitate the image of capitalism, we may soon slay the goose that lays the golden eggs. After all, free markets have created unprecedented leaps in living standards since the industrial revolution.

I agree with Mackie that business is about creating value for others rather than cutthroat competition. I think most people go into business because they have an idea for a product or service which they think is cool and that people would benefit from, and fantasize about making large sums of money helping people – rather than exploiting them. 

Mackey’s vision, and the story of Wholefood's ethical reforms is awe-inspiring in a way, and certainly demonstrates what big business can achieve in serving a higher purpose that speaks to the values of consumers. After all, a man does not live by organic, wholegrain, einkorn bread alone! 

However, in the interests of rigor, I would like to open a discussion about whether this kind of “ethical” or “conscious” capitalism is really the most effective way for companies to “do good” in the world.

I confess I have not been able to reach an answer yet. 

 

On one hand, the standards that Wholefoods have created for measuring the welfare standards of animal rearing will help all consumers and businesses who want to make ethical choices and minimize the suffering of the animals which they buy and sell.

On the other hand, everything comes at an opportunity cost.

The book Doing Good Better (2015) demonstrates that if you want to donate money to charity then making a choice based upon the best data will make a tremendous difference, because the best charities are literally thousands of times more efficient at allocating resources than the least efficient ones. (Happily, the entire audiobook is available free of charge on YouTube.)

The book was written by William MacAskill, professor at The University of Oxford. MacAskill is one of the pioneers of Effective Altruism, a philosophical movement seeking to bring empirical evidence to people on how to best have a positive impact in the world, be it by their choice of where to donate and spend their money, what career to pick, or where to volunteer their spare time.

Some of the fascinating conclusions MacAskill’s book presents are counterintuitive, and may even infuriate many a would-be conscious-consumer, for example:

1) If you want to reduce your carbon footprint, a donation of $110 a year to the most efficient carbon-offsetting company will help more than giving up your car, turning off all your lights, and taking a train instead of a plane. In fact, it will make you carbon negative, which not even giving up electricity in your house will do!

2) If you want to reduce the suffering of animals you better achieve that by donating to an efficient pressure group than by going vegetarian. (MacAskill is nonetheless a vegetarian.)

3) If you want to help the world's most impoverished people, buying fair trade products is not the way to do it. If you take the difference between the cost of the cheaper non-fair-trade product and the fair-trade product and donate it to one of the most effective poverty charities, your money will do hundreds or even thousands of times as much good per penny.

 

To summarize the key insight here: most well-intentioned people will assume that the best way to make a positive impact in the world is to make better consumption choices, but usually, donating a relatively small amount of money to an organization that knows how to spend it efficiently will often have a far greater impact then buying a product with ethical credentials or abstaining from the luxuries of civilization.

This is similar to how critics of capitalism tend to think that taxing the rich and giving it to the poor is the best way to alleviate poverty, when actually this creates a trade off in capital investment, which drives all the technology and innovations that increase living standards.

It is well known that our brains wired to respond to stories rather than statistics. For example, people are more likely to donate to a cause advertised by the moving story of one little girl and her tragic disaster than the details of thousands in dire straits, even if the second cause is more urgent and would allow fewer resources to go farther.

If the defence of capitalism is what we seek, then perhaps it will prove to be more important that businesses are seen to be doing good than the measure of how much good they are actually doing. It certainly seems to be important enough for many consumers to pay more for products or round up the cost of their purchases to donate to whatever inefficient charity has been selected by the owner of the kiosk they are shopping at.

 

As we know, shopping at Wholefoods is expensive. The question for the conscious consumer is whether they are doing better for the world by shopping there to support their policy of ethical meat sourcing, or if they’d have more impact by grabbing cheap animal products in a budget store and donating the difference to the right cause. (My writing on this matter, may strike some as somewhat ironic, as I, mystelf, am known by some in the libertarian community for being an ethical vegetarian.)

A more profound query still might be to ask whether Wholefoods would have reduced more animal suffering by investing in the best evidence-based causes than holding expensive consultations with environmentalists and agriculturalists.

The Whole Planet Foundation, which has alleviated poverty by issuing microcredit loans, is a credit to the world. The question is whether this is a case where the conspicuous benefit is seen, while what is unseen is that the same amount of resources allocated to the most efficient already existing organizations would have done far more good.

I don’t know how we would get the evidence to answer these questions, but there is someone out there who does. (Perhaps we could consult William MacAskill.)

 

I do not mean to be cynical. This is not an attempt to condemn Wholefoods, or the great John Mackey for their attempts to do good by consumers, animals, and the capitalist system. What Wholefoods have done is revolutionary, and I am happy that there is somewhere where people know for certain that they can get meat that is reared humanely.

But for us nit-pickers – obsessed with hard facts, efficiency and clear answers – the question will remain, what is the ideal libertarian strategy for is doing good in the world?

It is not a trivial question either. The welfare – and even lives – of real people depend upon the answer.

If you don't like it, you *can't* just leave.

I can't actually think of a single other way the "powers that be" could get people, en masse, to literally cheer for having their basic human freedoms (that people fought for centuries and worked their bloody arses off) to be taken away, But not only that, to actually virulently and viciously attack anyone who dares to say "maybe all this has gone a bit too far, eh?" like the person had suggested it should be legal to molest children in public,

Offcom have literally banned anyone going on air who would say that the WHO or CDC are mistaken or question their position, even though these organisations have contradicted themselves multiple times and proven themselves wrong. Even for those in favour of the lockdown, it should be a complete affront to them that in what is called a liberal democracy, we are allowed no public debate on the media about the government policy. In fact Boris and Nicola (two cheeks of the same arse) have each been given the "emergency powers" to pass policies that affect everyone in the country unilaterally, without so much as a discussion in parliament which itself is dictatorial.

We read 1984 and in history we are told how in communist and fascist dictatorships there was censorship and only one opinion was allowed to represented on the media. They literally will not have ANY experts on who will present data against the government's position on television and have not since the beginning of the lockdowns. No one seems to notice, no one seems to care, no one seems to criticise except a few of us.

Finally, I hope you realise, they have literally BANNED you from leaving the country, right? This is critical here. They have banned you from leaving the country. Constantly we have heard the chorus from statists, over and over again, telling us, singing from the same hymn sheet over and over again like they were programmed to do so, (they were by the way,) "Well, if you don't like it, you can just leave." That's what they always say.

Well guess what? 

If you don't like it, you can't just leave.

Live your life to the fullest you can under these conditions. Spend time with your loved ones, skype your granny, post letters to people who would never expect to get them for you. Read amazing novels, listen to insightful podcasts, watch those movies everyone says are fantastic but you just never got around to. Take exercise! Pursue your spiritual practices, pray to whatever deity you believe in, practice yoga, lean to meditate - I know you've been putting it off! But while you do that, oppose this flagrant regression to rule by barbarism with love in your heart.

Capitalism is for The People

There has never been a true free market but there have been degrees and we can measure the success in degrees. Chile is the most free market country in south america and the most prosperous (including for the poor). Estonia is the most free market of the post-eastern block countries and the most prosperous. Hong Kong and Singapore used to be as poor as Africa but became two of the richest countries in the world in 30-40 years because they became MORE free market that Europe and america. The African countries which have come up THE MOST have been those who have adopted free market policies, Ghana, Ethiopia (which had famines constantly under socialism), Rwanda, Tanzania, Botswana, etc. I only despair because I don't know how much evidence we need of the poverty-destroying effects of adopting free markets to change peoples opinion when the ideology is so fixed in their heads that socialism is "for the people" while capitalism is "for the rich." It's not true, capitalism FORCES the rich to SERVE the poor by delivering them those goods and services which THEY choose to patronize. If they don't serve the masses they don't earn a profit. If they don't improve their living standards by lowering the price of products and improving the quality of the products, someone else will come in and do it and outcompete them. Capitalism is for the people.

Usual Caveats Apply: Under the current system of capitalism we have corporations use the government to gain special privileges and bias the market, and this IS NOT for the people, etc. etc. etc. 

The Viewers Don't Want to See how Filthy their own Faces Are

There's a reason why they don't show slaughter houses on tv. There's a reason why they don't discuss spanking in any great depth with inference to evidence, routine infant circumcision, how to resolve interpersonal conflicts, or even how to reason. It's because there is a big taboo on television. And it's not on discussing the bankers, or 'exposing the people who are really pulling the strings.' The biggest taboo on television is not the corruption of politicians, bankers, or corporations. They are fair game. Broadcasting them is unlikely to inspire much change. That's all still divide and conquer - us vs them....... The biggest taboo on television is you. Anything that might question or challenge your personal habits or ethics and make you have to make changes in your own life. That's taboo. That's not allowed. People will complain.

Horizontal vs. Top-down Control

When I was growing up I got really into the "grand" global conspiracy. I went to see David Icke speak with my brother in a relatively small room in Stoke on Trent around 2002. There were only maybe a couple hundred people in the audience.

Later on, around 2007, I got really into economics and libertarianism. I began to think a less about the "global" conspiracy. Suddenly most of what I saw going on in society could be explained by economic incentives. 

For one thing, people like free stuff, of course they are going to vote it for themselves whenever they can. They don't typically see this as looting the commonweal, living at the expense of their neighbour, but "fair" in light of the challenges they face in life. Society has never told public sector workers, for example, that this is shameful, all is fair under democracy. A vote is a vote and a policy is a policy.

As a corollary, those individuals that make up government want power - even if it is power to "do good" according to their own values. One way the government can get power, while garnering the support of the populace, is to bribe people with handouts. People who receive benefits are from the state are likely to be supporters of the state. All the public servants, school teachers, university professors, campaign contributors, not to mention the politicians themselves, are basically bought off with public funds to be tacit allies of government. In addition to this, they keep an underclass on welfare, who can always be relied upon to support the institution of government out of fear of starvation. 

When our societies were not very affluent, only a small percentage of people's income could be appropriated in taxes because, say, a "0% reduction in the average person's living standards would have  been huge. As we have grown richer, the total tax many people pay is far in excess of half of their income. This allows the government to have a far greater number of people than ever before on its payrolls to protest tax increases, however, it does not cause the tax-payer themselves to starve. In addition to this, they believe they are at least in receipt of some services that have come to be seen as impossible to provide without government by the great majority of people, including roads, hospitals and schools. By this final act, the support of even the net tax-contributors are won over to the idea of government, and all of this is explainable merely by the incentives of the system itself. This is what you could more or less expect to happen in an affluent democracy. 

It's power being solidified, it's not difficult for the corporations, who deal with huge sums of money, to buy the government. In fact they are incentivised to do so. As soon as a corporation gains a greater return on their investment by lobbying the government than they do from serving their customer, that is what they are going to do. This completes the circle. 

Organisations like WHO, IMF, World Bank and CDC work in the interests of the corporations, but people think they are "government" agencies; which they take to mean working in the public interest.  

Now, this doesn't mean I don't believe individual conspiracies take place. For example, murder of Jeffrey Epstein. Other conspiracies such as The Lavon Affair or Operation Gladio are even freely admitted to have occurred. It just means that I don't necessarily think these need to be centrally orchestrated in smoky rooms by the same cabal of powermongers. 

The term conspiracy theory, itself, is simply used to dismiss claims out of hand and relieve people of the need for further investigation. The term "conspiracy theorist" is synonymous with "nut," and it is popular to psychologize people who believe in conspiracies as having some strange motive to find patterns where there are none. However, someone can have psychological tendencies which drive them towards a position - and that position can still be true! One of the appeals of the "conspiracy theorists" in the pre-YouTube world was exactly that they would bring context to a media landscape devoid of it, where the media would portray complex events as a snapshot in time. For example, propagandizing the populace with the claim that, "Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds," without showing either of the videos of Donald Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, meeting with Hussein in the 80s to sell him weapons.

Like many, recent events regarding the Global Pandemic (or "Globalist Plandemic" to conspiracy theorists), like many, have really made me think again of the global conspiracy again.

A global conspiracy, of course, could exist, and by its very nature of being secret and covert we would not even know about it.

My question though, remains, what is actually the scarier thought?

If there are just a handful of evil men who are orchestrating world event, up to no good, then it is relatively easy to depose them.

If it is not a centrally planned conspiracy then the world becomes far harder to fix. You have a nice neighbour, but he doesn't believe you should be able to operate a hair salon without a licence. Your drinking buddies want to take your guns. Your churchmates don't think gays should be allowed to get married. Another friend says Soviet Russia wasn't real communism and real communism has never been tried. All the people at your local theatre group support you being taxed to pay for allopathic medical treatments that you disagree with, taking money from you to pay big pharma. Atheists want Christians to pay for abortions. Meat eaters want vegans to pay for subsidies to dairy farmers. 

In other words - control is not exerted upon you vertically, from above, but horizontally, by the very people around you, whom you love.

 

Charity or Investment?

There is general bias towards the belief that if rich people give away their money (or are taxed is more) then that will be more beneficial to humanity as a whole than if they reinvesting their fortune in the stock-market. When people hear that such-and-such is a billionaire, they tend to think Mr. Billionaire is 'hoarding the money' and he 'doesn't need it because he is rich enough' as though the money is sitting under his bed. But it's not, it's invested in businesses that often end up doing a great deal of good, not for Mr. Billionaire, but for the average person. To illustrate, imagine:

Option A. Mr. Billionaire gives away 1.2 billion to Africans, might be a drop in the ocean. This amounts to around $1 per person. Very soon the money is spent, nothing systematic has changed, and things revert to more or less the way they were before. 

Option B. Mr. Billionaire invests 1.2 billion in an engineering company that invents an innovation in communications technology for people’s phones. This is driven by consumer demand, but it ends up making it significantly cheaper to build infrastructure in Africa. This sets aspects of the process of development forwards by a decade. It actively takes people out of poverty is a durable way.

The advantage investment has is it’s actually responsive to public preferences. I.e. If people don’t buy the products that Mr Billionaire invests in it will get re-diverted into things that people do want to buy. There is a feedback mechanism to prevent it from being wasted, as the rich guy does not want to lose his investment. 

Giving is more guess work. 

This process does not depend on the magnanimity of the investor either. He can invest out of pure self-interest and still benefit society as a whole. If the first millionaires gave away their money rather than reinvesting them in other businesses thinking that was the best way to do good it may have set back technological progress by decades we might not have computers yet.

These things are more complex than people intuit. If world poverty was as easily solved as some think it could be we would have done it already.

Corona Virus Lockdown Truth Bombs

1) The simple fact is that if you want stuff - i.e. wealth rather than poverty... people have to actually Make the stuff. It doesn’t come out of thin air. 

2) It’s nice to think that with a magic wand all we have to do is appropriate the wealth of "the greedy rich" and redistribute it, but the fact is almost all the money they have is invested in the machines and factories that make a modern standard of living possible, and the technology that promises to improve it in the future. Moving it from capital investment to consumption will make everyone poor not rich. They will go out to the shops and spend it, the price of goods and services will shoot through the roof, and we will be worse off. 

3) Spending does not create wealth saving does.

4) If you stop people working for the best part of a year don’t be surprised when everyone is poor in the future. It’s going to take years for people to recover from the poverty, possibly decades.

5) If people blame the on eeeevil capitalism they will end up killing the goose that laid the golden eggs that bought all the privileges they are lamenting having lost from shutting the economy down. 

6) It may be nice to fantasize that some benign gods will come along to take over and run everything in the interests of "the people" (whatever that means) - but we are infinitely more likely to end up looking like Venezuela or Cuba. 

7) If you're not scared of this outcome you should be. 

Governments Are Not Incentivized to Solve Problems

States arose with agriculture, around the same time as slavery. When states were monarchies, it was relatively obvious that the institution existed - like slavery - to separate people into two classes. One that produced, and another one that consumed. 

This fact became intolerable, and people demanded to have a say in how the state was run. They did not imagine that states, as such, were the problem, but simply that they were run by monarchs. They could no longer imagine forms of organisation that did not involve state, but really states are the anomaly. Throughout most of history there were none. They are a logical error predicated on misunderstanding of economics. 

Economics demonstrates that people and institutions tend to act as they are incentivized to behave.

Companies gain wealth from providing goods and services for money, the consumer is king and puts them out of business if they don't deliver the goods. Charities have limited resources and must allocate them effectively if they are to do well in league tables. Even then there is still corruption.

The government is simply not incentivized  to solve problems. First, they get paid whether they do a good job or not. Second, they monopolize services so they can't compare their performance to other strategies and adopt other people's innovations. 

Damningly, the government derives its power from people being poor because the pretext for every government program is "how will the poor get xyz if the government does not provide it". 

If poor people become rich they will just do what middle class people do which is take their kids of out public schools and put them in better private schools, take out health insurance so they don’t need to rely on poorer nhs hospitals, there will be less crime so less need for police, and no poor people to go in the army and fight endless wars in the Middle East. With the diminishing need for social programs because people are rich enough to solve their own local issues, there will be less need for social workers and other social services. Millions of government bureaucrats will no longer be necessary. How can the government even make them redundant given that A) they represent a huge voting block? and B) they are heavily unionized. 

Solving problems reduces the need for government and no one puts themselves out of a need for a job unless they are forced to. The incentive structures are such that government are doomed to fail and basically everything that economic theory predicts you will find from government is exactly what you see the results to be. More and more dependence, less self-sufficiency, people bribed with public funds to support this or that policy, and driven to hatred of one another. 

Private Ownership of the Means of Production confers a Social Benefit

Perhaps the most difficult battle faced by the advocates of free markets it to convince people that Private Ownership of the Means of Production is not some special privilege conferring and advantage to "greedy capitalists" at the expense of everyone else, but that it serves a social function that is beneficial to all.

Private ownership makes the accumulated wealth of the entrepreneur a slave to the consumer - that is - to everyone else. We commonly understand private ownership to mean "for our own use," eg. the use of a toothbrush or a private residence, but in the case of private ownership, what is owned is almost exclusively for the use of others, placed at their service.

The capitalist keeps his wealth only to the extend he continues to use what he has accumulated in the interests of the masses, as they judge them, by churning out whichever goods and services they demand. To the extent he succeeds, his wealth will grow. This is the economy’s way of saying that he makes sure and wise decisions with the capital we have amassed as a society - not wasting them on projects that the public have no interest in paying for. To the extent he fails to do so, those factories, machines and companies that his investments represent will be sold on at knock-down rates to whoever thinks they can do a better job of managing them in the public interest. This allows for the constant re-allocation of capital to those who can best manage it, and engenders the accumulation of more capital over time. As the capital stock increase there is more wealth generation and technological advancement can be expected, and this will necessarily be largely led by the preferences of consumers, not those who actually "own" the capital.

Capitalism is not "A System of Competition"

Capitalism - A System of Competition?

Capitalism has often been described by as “a system of competition” by its adversaries, or a system “based on competition.” Naturally, this assertion is usually coupled with a spirited oration on how this “tooth n’ nail” competition psychologically corrupts us – pitting man against man in a “race to the bottom.”

Many of capitalism’s most vocal advocates have, themselves, imbibed this premise uncritically. They leap to a fervent defences of competition, extolling its virtues – real or perceived. In my view this is a mistake. To accept without evaluation the presupposition that capitalism is a system of competition – in contrast to other hypothetical systems of cooperation (namely socialism and communism) – is to frame the very debate itself in leftist terms and play the game on an unfairly tilted game-board.

Competition is Fierce for Government-Controlled Resources

This is not to say that those who defend competition do not raise some worthy points. For example: If not competition, then what is the alternative? Is there to be one central provider of each good and service available who gets to decide on our behalf how it is best to be produced and then allocated? Add to that, that if competition is wrong in the market, then why not in the political sphere? Surely democracy is out of the question if competition is a corrupting factor, because what do political candidates do if not compete for office? Think of the competition this generates between political parties, not to mention the ensuing competition between firms and individuals for preferential treatment from politicians and legislators, competition between lobbyists, think-tanks, and voters, to receive benefits out of the public purse. If the free and voluntary section of society is a system of competition, how much more so is government? Surely democracy is a “system of competition.” Politicians are competing for the very machinations of control in our society. For the right to pass and enforce laws which apply to everyone (whether they agree with them or not) and to force them to pay for their enforcement. They are not simply competing for market share where the winner of the competition is the one that satisfies the most demand. We can sidestep the more mundane economic arguments in favour of competition for the moment, such as the case that it increases efficiency and cheapens goods while driving innovation, as we are all familiar with them already.

Capitalism is a System of Voluntary Exchange

Nonetheless, parsing what is essentially a sociological debate – a meditation upon the effects of an economic environment upon the soul of man – in socialist terms; basing it upon left-wing premises without examining their foundation is to cede too much ground. A comical equivalent would be for a leftist responding to the clichéd assertion of the American right that “Hitler was a Socialist!” by arguing that many of his labour policies were successful in improving social conditions for the working class.

This is not to say that competition is necessarily an evil either. The problem lies in defining capitalism as “a system of competition” - in comparison to other systems which are somehow “cooperative”; that is a rhetorical ploy. Those who profess it may honestly believe it to be so, but it’s not true. Capitalism is not “a system of competition” any more than any other system. Capitalism (at least in its free-market, laissez faire ideal) is a system of the voluntary exchange of goods and services in the absence of physical coercion, theft, compulsion or fraud, predicated upon the fundamental right to own and accumulate property.

Or, for brevity: Capitalism is a system of voluntary exchange, predicated upon the right to own property.

One might even venture, therefore, that capitalism is a system of voluntary cooperation.

Granted, this definition still leaves room to debate the morality of accumulating property. Or perhaps whether the “negative” right to ownership when it comes to the rich should take precedence over the “positive” right to healthcare or education at their expense when it comes to the poor. We can even debate whether the relationship between capitalists and their employees are really free of coercion given the power disparity between the two groups. Indeed these are debates I delight in exploring further. However, there is no justification for defining capitalism as a system based upon competition.

Because Scarcity is a Fact of Life, Competition will Exist under Any System

The reason for this is that while the voluntary exchange of goods and services may give rise to a certain amount of competition, competition does not give rise to the voluntary exchange of goods and services. Scarcity does. In any situation of scarcity of resources, there is bound to be some form of competition over those resources (as well as over how those resources are allocated). To exemplify the mistake that is being made here, consider the uncontroversial statement: “The fact that things exist gives rise to motion.”; Now, if I were to conclude that because of this, “motion itself gives rise to the material world,” that would be a weird conclusion to reach. Motion is a feature of the material world, not what defines it or gives rise to it. Similarly, competition is a feature found within a capitalist economy, but it is not its defining feature, nor is it only a feature of capitalism…

If we have a system that allows voluntary exchange, some competition is bound to arise out of that, but that would happen under any system. Even if you had a completely communistic society, which was centrally planned and involved no exchange of money whatsoever, people’s time would still be limited. If you were a film maker in this society, you would probably want as many people to see your films as possible. As would every other film-maker. That would put you at least somewhat in competition with them. Does this mean that communism, too, is a system of competition? Certainly you would be competing for the only customer – the sponsorship of the state. Corruption and cronyism would surely be the result. Who gets their film made and who doesn’t? Who allocates the highly desirable job of being a film-maker over the undesirable job of being a street-sweeper or refuse collector, and how can their favour be courted? The competition will commence, but instead of being decided by the free and voluntary exchange of film-goers, investors and film-makers it will be decided by someone else, I would argue, in a rather more authoritarian fashion. (For a particularly vivid and chilling illustration of how communism substitutes market competition over customers [which is at least tied to the provision of desirable services] for the completely unmeritocratic competition over gaining favour from the corrupt power structure of the state, I refer the reader to Ayn Rand’s first novel, We The Living.)

Competition is a feature of living in a world of scarcity and would exist in any system. Socialism cannot do away with competition – nor can any other system. Therefore it is wrong, both logically and polemically, to define capitalism as “a system of competition” in contrast to socialism; let alone define communism – a system where individuals will have to compete for the favour of authorities who make decisions on their behalf – as a system of cooperation.

Scarcity Means Competition Extends Beyond the Economy

The implications of these facts reach into any circumstances of scarcity beyond the economy. For example, supposing two friends each invite me over to dinner of an evening, I might have to make a choice between their invitations which will result in one of them losing out on my company. Does this then mean that friendship is a system of competition?

We can’t see all of our friends all of the time, or even all of them at the same time. Even if we do, we are bound to have to split our attention between them. In addition to that we can only maintain so many close friendships at once, and we definitely can’t be friends with everyone. All of this means that inevitably we have to make choices. We each make decisions on who to make and maintain friendships with based upon our value judgements, conscious or unconscious. Perhaps based on how happy we feel around them, how long we have known one another, how much we have in common, how much we trust someone or how loyal they have shown themselves to be, how much they educate, enrich or enlighten us, or perhaps based upon what roles roles they allow us to fulfil in their lives. There can be countless other reasons. The fact is we decide. People who feel that they will benefit from our company, for whatever reason, will make attempts to spend time with us. We will invariably begin to make choices on who to spend time with based upon our values, schedule, and what other activities we are willing sacrifice to see them. These are basic facts of life, but they hardly make friendship a system of competition.

Similarly, on the market, our time and resources are limited. We make value-based judgements about choices of products and services to consume based upon what utility we think they will bring to us, sacrificing some options to others. Maybe we will choose a coffee shop based on which has the best tasting coffee, or maybe based on which provides the nicest atmosphere, or maybe based on which is closest, or where the customer service is best, or which is the cheapest, or which we have gone to the longest and therefore find familiar, or perhaps even based on which we think has the best ethos – for example, because they are a social enterprise that only sells fair trade produce and deliberately seeks to employ and train disadvantaged people. The fact is we decide. Each service provider believes they will benefit from our custom and will make attempts to attract us, placing an upward pressure on the quality of services and a downward pressure on price which we may correctly identify as a form of competition. Since human beings are not infallible, sometimes someone might buy a coffee that they don’t end up liking, but over the long term the competition is likely to be won by the satisfaction of customers.

Free to Choose

The miraculous wonder we miss when we focus our attention upon the competition which derives from choice is the ability to choose itself. For example, supposing two commercial events are being held on the same evening. Each perspective patron will want to choose whichever event appeals to them the most, and for whatever reasons they choose based upon what they value in an event. Now, to simply mention that these events are “in competition” would be to completely miss the crucial point that event-goers (who are in the majority compared to event-organizers) have a choice of two events which they may prefer to go to one of rather than one alone.

There is no necessity for competition implicit in the market either. If both events are in jeopardy due to a lack of patrons, then their organizers can always put their heads together and create one bigger, better event. Or they can choose distinct themes that are aimed at different audiences, or perhaps they will agree that it would be in their interests if one of them moved their event to a different night, and they could cross-promote one another. This is part of the free choice the market affords, unless the government has passed laws against it, calling it “collusion.”

The defining feature of the market, clearly, is not competition, but choice. The freedom to choose. It is only when event organizers can go to the government to force people to buy tickets, or shut down other events, or get preferential legislation passed to make it easier for them to advertise, or regulate the market so tightly that only established events-managers can survive, that we see competition become the dominant force. Coercion has entered the market which is no longer free. This is not free market capitalism but what we observe in many sectors of our society today – crony capitalism, or “neo-liberalism” as some may call it. (Unfortunately the failings of “neo-liberalism” are endlessly pinned on the market economy itself rather than the state’s nefarious influence in the market.)

It is worth mentioning that there is actually far more cooperation involved in providing people with goods and services than competition. You have to cooperate with buyers, sellers, managers, employees, suppliers, customers, advertisers, promoters, marketers, collective buyers, and so on. Leonard E. Read (1898-1983), founder of the Foundation for Economic Education, illustrated this in his most famous essay, I, Pencil, first published in 1958. In it he noted that not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make a pencil. He goes onto explain that the cedarwood is sourced from Oregon and the logs milled in California. The graphite is mined in Ceylon, mixed with clay from Mississippi, then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico to increase its strength and smoothness. The six coats of lacquer come separately from the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil. In fact, when you include those who manufacture and transport the equipment involved in these processes you cannot help but marvel at the fact that millions of people have a hand in its creation. They are working in concert, in cooperation, and as a result you can get a pencil for pennies.

To the extent that it is free, the self-interest of the producer is subordinated to the hardly antisocial end of meeting the desires of others. A producer wins the competition only by organising a vast degree of cooperation in the service of satisfying the demand of consumers. This means producing things that regular people like you and I value enough to part with their scarce resources for. To the extent the government interferes in the market, firms are enticed to compete over government contracts, subsidies, preferential legislations, and so forth. This is a corrupting factor in the market as companies no longer have to focus on serving consumers but doing whatever it takes to beguile officials. Sometimes that may well be providing the best service, but this becomes far more likely as the end user is no longer the buyer. Instead they may lobby, bribe, or bait with promises of high paying positions for officials after they leave office. In my book Universal Basic Income – For and Against I note that according to The Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that aims to make government more accountable and transparent, “For each of the 5.8 billion dollars spent by America's 200 most politically active corporations between 2007 and 2012 on federal lobbying and campaign contributions they got $741 in return in kickbacks and benefits. This poses a tremendous problem because as soon as it becomes more profitable for a business to lobby the government than serve their customers then lobbying will become their top priority. This is why government is often a corrupting actor in the economy rather than a referee. The mutual benefit of politicians and big business getting in bed together often outweigh those of serving the public. These incentives drive companies to misallocate resources by making products that the general public doesn't want profitable, and products that they do unprofitable. In other words, the government has become the client of these corporations rather than their customers.” The competition has turned sour.

Those free-market advocates who extol the virtues of competition may point out that every service provider is, in one sense, actually competing with every other product that someone can possibly conceive of buying with their money, and argue that is a good thing as encourages firms to really try their best to create things that will please people in order to earn their cash and do business with them. Still, it cannot be said that capitalism is a system of competition – because competition is not the basis of the system, but choice. The freedom of consumers to choose gives rise to trial and error between competing service-providers attempting to draw a profit by catering broadly to as many consumers as possible or narrowly to meet certain niches depending upon their expertise and predilections. As human desires are infinite, there will likely always be incrementally more beneficial ways of meeting those desires, and thus infinite scope for innovation. What the market allows is for different producers to fill different niches. Buyers are able to compare the relative merits and drawbacks of competing products and vote with their cash on which they feel will better meet their needs according to their own values. Producers themselves are able to observe innovations in the marketplace and attempt to improve upon whichever products or services are already available. Customers will ultimately be the arbitrators of which models are successful and which will be weeded out the market. While there is clearly some competition in this process, overall it is a system of cooperation between buyers and sellers to reach a mutually satisfying voluntary exchange. In comparison to a centrally planned economy (or sector of an economy) where the amount of trial and error is very limited, and the state must roll out a one-size-fits-all solution scarcely tested against other possible solutions – a little competition between service producers might be worthwhile in exchange for a greater degree of autonomy and cooperative communication between service users and service providers which takes the form of supply and demand.

The beauty of the free market, when it is allowed to function, it that it is a constantly self-correcting and self-optimising system. Producers can reflect upon what is available and look for gaps in the market, or improvements upon existing services, and the public will quickly be able to provide signals of what is serving them and what is not by which variations they choose to part with their money for. Over time this leads to a general improvement in the standard of service available to them and decrease in cost which is probably why most of the products we buy are pretty decent. If someone sells a faulty watch then we have somewhere else to go for watches. If we did away with choice in the name of eliminating competition, if there was a design flaw in one watch it would have already been rolled out to every store and it would be too late. What is more if someone could think of any small way to make the watch better, more accurate, more durable, more energy efficient, the new model would probably not hit the market for fear of someone making another improvement upon it making all of those obsolete as well.

The Primary Feature of Capitalism is Choice, Not Competition

So to review, because people make choices with scarce resources and limited time, competition will be an inherent part of any economic system so long as there is scarcity. The primary feature of free market capitalism is not competition, but choice. Rather than moderate the amount of competition in an economy, state intervention will replace competition to serve customers on a voluntary basis with competition over gaining the favour of whoever is responsible for allocating resources within government. Instead of competing to serve their customers as best as they possibly can to achieve the biggest market share – firms can, will, and do, compete for government favours, and to have their products “rolled out” by the state to as many people as they can using public funds or subsidies out of the public purse. This is where the real “tooth and nail” begins.