The conflicting beliefs, that competition serves to drive the advancement of society thereby bringing wealth and happiness, and its counter, that competition acts by bring destruction and suffering are common place within society.  These beliefs, often fanatical beliefs, result from the common behaviour of people focusing only on those aspects of a phenomenon that most effect them.  If an individual has generally benefited within competitive environments they will be inclined to look at the benefits of competition, thereby justifying their positive attitude, whereas those who have suffered under similar circumstances would be inclined to focus on the negative aspects, being as those qualities of competition would be the ones they would have had the greatest experience with.  The reality of competition is that it has both beneficial and detrimental manifestations; it comes in both constructive and destructive forms.

            Destructive competition is competition in which there is a clear winner and loser, where victory is had at the definite detriment of another.  There are times when destructive competition is an ethically and/or strategically valid option; if someone is intent on an individual’s destruction then the only way that individual can deal with such a threat would be to destroy this other before the other destroys them, however, an unbiased observation of the world we live in reveals that, in general, people’s strive, and creatures evolve, to avoid this situation.  There are two basic strategies used in place of destructive competition, constructive competition and a second method, non-competition.  Now, a common belief of those with a positive attitude towards competition is that competition acts as a significant force driving the individual towards competence and strength, however, this is only true in the case of constructive competition.  In destructive competition the goal is to be stronger than the competitor, which can be achieved either by strengthening oneself or by weakening the competitor.  Since destruction is, almost always, easier and faster than creation, destructive competitors typically choose to attack the other rather than strengthen themselves.  As a result, destructive competition inevitably leads to both parties striving to drive each other down, thereby typically leaving both competitors weaker, so that even if one of the competitors should ultimately be victorious, that individual will typically be left too weak to deal with any future competitors or circumstances that may appear.  Consequently, destructive competition generally leads to mutual destruction, one losing immediately, while the other losing in the long run.  Constructive competition, on the other hand, is competition in which destructive activities towards a competitor are strictly excluded.  In this way, the competitors can only compete by making themselves stronger, and so they only become more capable of dealing with other competitors and circumstances as time passes, and hence achieve mutual success.  The problem with constructive competition is that it only works if both competitors behave in this constructive fashion.  If one competitor behaves constructively, while the other chooses to carry out destructive activities, since destruction is more effective than construction the constructive competitor would quickly lose.  Therefore, no one can behave in a constructively competitive manner unless they can be assured that their competitor will behave likewise.  Behaving in such a manner towards every competitor would simply be handing success to those who choose to act destructively.  Although constructive competition is a mutually beneficial strategy, it does have the disadvantage of being wasteful.  The act of competition demands that the competitors expend a great deal of time, energy and resources striving against each other, and once these are used they will no longer be available for dealing with new competitors or situations.  As a result, two constructively competing individuals may find that a third, destructively inclined individual, arrives after they’ve been competing with each other.  Since they’ve used up their energy against each other, the third individual would have little difficulty defeating them both.  On the other hand, if these two individuals chose not to compete with each other, they would maintain their strength for dealing with any such third party.  This is non-competition, the behaviour by which individuals act in a mutually non-competitive manner in order to gain superior strength to deal with a common destructive competitor.  In a similar manner to constructive competition, non-competition requires that the individuals be certain of the behaviour of their non-competitive partners.  If an individual were to show non-competitive behaviour toward someone who chooses to behave destructively, they would be leaving themselves completely defenceless, and hence would be quickly defeated or destroyed.  An individual can only behave non-competitively if they are confident that the person they show this behaviour towards would behave non-competitively towards them.  Although constructive competition and non-competition are far superior strategies to destructive competition, destructive competition remains the most common strategy since it doesn’t require any trust or understanding of another individual; it is, in fact, the default strategy, the strategy used when the competition cannot be trusted and consequently the other strategies become unavailable.  Constructive and non- competition only appear where mutually beneficial behaviours between individuals can be assured, a challenge which, do to the considerable benefits, both biological and social evolution strive to tackle.

The concepts of constructive, destructive and non- competition allows for an advanced understanding of certain types of animal behaviour.  On the surface of it, sparring between two deer would seem like an act of destructive competition, that the winner takes everything while the loser’s genes are lost, however this sparring is, in fact, an act of constructive competition.  Although the horns of many horned animals look impressive, they are generally not designed (with a few exceptions) for offensive use, rarely if ever being used to fend off a predator; rather they are typically designed specifically for the courtship ritual.  All one of these animals would need to ensure their genes were passed to the next generation would be to have horns, and a behaviour, that specifically causes significant harm to the competition.  The other animals would be at a severe disadvantage against this since they have been designed by evolution for constructively competitive behaviour, and so would quickly be displaced by the new animal.  So the question is, how does evolution prevent these courtship rituals from turning into blood baths.  The answer to this is that sparing animals generally live in herds, and although an individual animal may gain a genetic advantage in the herd, if the herd as a whole degenerates then it will be out competed by the next herd.  If a herd generates a destructively competitive individual then the herd would quickly turn destructive and the competition that occurs within the herd would cease to make the herd stronger.  Horned animals evolve their horns, and behavioural use of those horns, specifically to select for the most beneficial traits for their species.  For example, deer develop large intricate antlers that take great agility to mesh with those of their competitor and which, once meshed, are used to engage in a pushing match.  In nature deer generally live in wooded areas where agility keeps them from getting tangled up and hence becoming an easy target for a predator.  They also require the strength of leg necessary to escape such predators.  As such the design of a deer’s antlers selects for the traits of most benefit to the species.  Rams, on the other hand, live in mountainous environments where jumping strength and precision are vital to survival, and so have developed ramming horns which are ideal for selecting for these traits.  However, if such horns start to be use for destructive competition instead, if they are used to promote the genetic success of the individual over the species, then this evolved selection would cease and the herd would weaken.  Herding has another effect as well.  It is often suggested that herds are used to provide mutual protection from predators, whereas, in reality, herds provide easy pickings for predators, an environment where the predator would be hard press to fail to catch something.  This is, in fact, part of the purpose of herds; they sacrifice the slowest and weakest members of the herd in order to ensure the survival of the strongest.  If a predator finds an individual animal it will try its best to catch that animal, but if it is given a large selection it will select the slowest one, the easiest one to catch.  The result is that the members of a herd that are most important to the future of the species are kept safe.  However, if the species were acting in a destructively competitive manner then the fittest members of the herd could vary well get injured, and hence would become the easy targets.  As such the species as a whole would gain the greatest benefit, under this circumstance, by failing to herd and so herding would not develop.  Therefore the herding behaviour is an indicator showing that that particular animal normally engages in constructively competitive rituals during courtship.

Of constructive competition and non-competition, constructive competition is by far the most common strategy in nature.  This results since constructive competition acts to make the members of a species stronger and hence more capable of out competing other species which compete with them.  Since other species are genetically different from each other, a given species can never trust another species to act constructively or non-competitively.  Therefore, it is necessary for all such species to maximize the competitive power of their members in order to ensure that such members would be able to out compete any competition from such other species.  However, non-competition does not increase the competitive power of an individual, only constructive competition can do this.  As such, any species failing to use constructive competition between its members would inevitably go extinct.  Now, although non-competition is not as vital to survival of a species as constructive competition, it still acts to increase the competitive ability of one species over another, and so, when it can develop, it does.  A prime example of non-competition is the hive.  In a hive the members do not compete for food, they simply gather as much as they can and share what they gather.  Because of this behaviour, a hive of bees will more efficiently gather pollen than an equal number of wasps each working alone, and more over, the members of the hive will be healthier since they do not have to deal with starvation if another bee from the hive gets to the food supply ahead of them.  As such, a hive of bees will typically out compete a community of wasps; the wasps only gaining the advantage if the environment has too little food to support a full hive.  The primary problem with this strategy of bees is that they sacrifice most of their constructive competition in order to achieve this non-competitive advantage.  The only time when constructive competition occurs within a hive is between the male bees during their competition to mate with the queen, and so the wasps, by sacrificing the non-competitive advantage, maintain a greater individual competitive power, and so are able to survive despite the non-competitive strength of the hive.  What makes this disadvantage of the hive acceptable is the extremely close genetic relationships between the members.  Because of this close similarity in genetics members of non-competitive structures gain relatively little by constructive competition between each other since, with so little difference between the members, one member’s genes are generally equal to another’s in quality.  Because of this, species in which closely related individuals group together will, if at all possible, develop non-competitive behaviours within these groups since doing so is only of benefit, since such species can gain the advantage of non-competition for a minimal loss of individual competitive power.

Now, in nature non-destructive competition is almost never achieved unless there is a close genetic relationship between two individuals.  For a species it is only possible to guarantee that another individual will compete non-destructively if that other individual is nearly identical to the first.  Intelligence, however, can allow an individual to identify how another person may behave without the need for such genetic similarities.  One common technique for identifying whether or not someone will behave non-destructively is to search for love.  Since love is the motivation to support and benefit another, to value the other’s health and well being as much as one’s own, a loving individual will never act in a manner that would detriment the one they love.  Therefore, if an individual could determine another person’s love for them then they would be assured from this that this person would not compete destructively with them, and so they could act constructively or non-competitively towards them without danger.  The problem with this strategy is that it is often difficult to distinguish love from desire in an intimate relationship.  Both of these emotions act to draw people together, and so the presence and attention of another, and their interest in an intimate relationship, is not a sufficient indication of love.  This is where the relationship strategy of selection of an equal comes into play.  Almost all people end up with mates who are equally in desirability to themselves.  The common, selfish and superficial, explanation for this is that people strive to attain the very most desirable mate they can.  That the reason people end up with equals is that they will not accept anyone who they see as being less than the best they can get and likewise, no one will accept them who sees them as being less than the best that they can get.  However, by this explanation, since everyone is choosing equals, everyone must be selfish and superficial; everyone must be acting by pursuing their desires without consideration for anyone else’s best interests.  There is, however, another way of looking at this problem.  When an individual is looking for someone who loves them they are, in fact, looking for someone who puts their best interests to the forefront, someone who would not take advantage of them.  Such a loving individual would want to ensure the greatest happiness of the one they love and so they would want that loved one to be with the best person for them.  So, if an individual is looking for love and another person, who is significantly less desirable, indicates interest in an intimate relationship then it could only be concluded that that person is acting on desire, not love.  Since such a person would know that the individual they are interested in would be better served by being with someone else, they would, in fact, be asking that individual to make a sacrifice for them, and therefore would be asking for their desires to be satisfied, not for an opportunity to further express their love.  For this reason, when an individual is approached intimately by someone who is less desirable than themselves they know that this person doesn’t love them, and so they must deny them.  Likewise, this same argument applies to the pursuit of someone who is significantly less desirable as well.  It would seem that if the individual who asks for the relationship were the more desirable of the two then that individual would only be pursuing such a relationship out of love, and this is, in fact, true.  The problem is that the pursued individual would never accept such a relationship out of love.  If the person being asked, the less desirable of the two, loved the other then they would want the best for that individual, but the best for that individual would not be them, and so they would have to refuse such a request.  If they were to agree it would be out of desire, out of putting their desires ahead of the best interests of the other person.  As a result, a desirable individual will typically not ask for a relationship with someone less desirable than themselves since the only way in which they could get a positive response would be if the other person doesn’t love them, and hence doesn’t deserve them.  The result of all this is that people normally end up in relations with others of approximately equal desirability regardless of whether they are selfish or selfless, superficial or deep.  Selfish and superficial individuals end up with equals because that is the best they could get, because everyone more desirable than themselves turned them down.  Selfless and deep individuals end up with equals since they refuse anyone who is more desirable, and are forced to refuse anyone less desirable than themselves in their pursuit of love.  What distinguishes these two groups, however, is that selfish, superficial people will, if the opportunity ever arises, choose a mate who is significantly more desirable than themselves, whereas selfless, deep people would not.  Therefore, by choosing a mate who has proven that they would never accept or pursue anyone who is better than themselves, an individual attains certainty that their mate is with them out of love, and can therefore trust them sufficiently to behave in a non-competitive manner.  On the other hand, those who go for the best they can get still end up with a mate who is their equal, but because they were trying to satisfy their desires without consideration for their mates best interests, their mate would also have to behave this way.  As such, selfish, superficial people gain no advantage over selfless, deep people as far as the quality of their mates is concerned, but do to their selfishness they end up in destructively competitive relationships, either having their mate cheat on them or having to expend considerable time and energy preventing this.

This problem of selfish and selfless people’s actions appearing to be almost identical causes considerable difficulty in distinguishing good from evil.  For instance, an evil individual may shot someone out of selfishness, the desire to take or do something, while a good person would use the same gun to kill such an evil individual in order to prevent this crime.  Good and evil both use the same tools; it is the goals that they use these tools towards that differentiate them from each other.  There is an experiment that has been conducted that shows this problem well.  In this experiment two strangers are placed at the same table.  The experimenter acts by putting down bills, one at a time, in front of these two, and whoever takes the money first gets to keep it.  If the two people were to be patient and allow the money to accumulate on the table they would come away with the greatest amount, however this never happens.  As soon as the first bill hits the table the two individuals always grab for it.  This experiment is then followed by a second experiment.  In this second experiment the individual who got the money is introduced to another person, who they are made to believe has no money and is in need.  What is found in this experiment is that the individual who had previously, apparently greedily, grabbed for the money usually gives this money to the individual they believe to be in need, thereby showing selflessness.  This produces an apparent contradiction in which an individual shows both the quality of selfishness, grabbing for the money, and selflessness, giving it to those in need.  What this experiment truly reflects is the strategy of ethics, that in a situation where the ethics of another individual are not known a good person is forced to use destructive competition.  An evil individual would always carry out destructive competition, trying to gain the money for themselves to satisfy their selfishness.  A good individual, on the other hand, would be willing to allow the money to be taken by another good person since then they would know that it would be used for good, however they have no way of knowing whether the other person at the table is good or evil.  Since they cannot allow the money to be taken by an evil individual, and since they are good, getting the money ensures that it ends up in good hands.  As a result, the evil person grabs from the money out of selfishness while the good person grabs for it in order to ensure that it doesn’t fall into the hands of an evil individual.  However, the second experiment showed that most of the strangers brought to the table were, in fact, good people, people who would use the money for good if they acquired it.  These experiments show that both good and evil use the same tool, destructive competition, however they use this tool for different goals; evil uses it to serve its selfishness while good uses it to fight against evil.

Now, although love is valuable for generating non-destructive relationships between people, it has severe limitations.  Love is an emotion, and as an emotion it can only be experienced towards people who have personal importance to the individual.  Such an individual can love family members, friends and their mate, but they could not love a complete stranger and may not love an associate even though that associate may be worthy of non-destructive interactions with them.  Moreover, an individual could love someone who is not deserving of non-destructive relations, someone who is evil, or they could hate someone who is very much deserving.  The advantage of love is that, as an emotion, it is evolved and hardwired into people so that no matter how ethically or socially evolved, or not, they may be they can still develop non-destructive relationships with other people.  However, as an emotion, love has the disadvantage of developing independently of an individual’s wisdom; love can develop towards the wrong people, and hence can create non-destructive relations between evil people, people who would otherwise be unable to interact with others in this way, or could create such relations between good and evil individuals, thereby leading otherwise good people to support and protect evil. 

These problems with love as a source of non-destructive behaviour between people are not an issue with honour.  Honour is the quality of upholding one’s principles at all costs.  What honour does is it makes an individual predictable; it ensures that the individual always acts the same way, always doing the honourable thing, in any situation.  By doing this, by always showing this same behaviour, the individual’s non-destructive behaviours become predictable and so, if someone else should be inclined to likewise behave non-destructively they could do so without fear that this individual might turn on them, without fear of being attacked once their guard was lowered.  The result of this is that honourable people typically end up with non-destructive relations with most of the people they meet or know, and so they generally grow strong and wealthy as a result of the consequent constructively competitive and non-competitive situations they experience.  Of course, not everyone who is predictable has honour; honour is based on an individual upholding principles.  An individual’s principles are a set of behaviours that they believe are necessary for the creation and support of good. 

For instance, a racist has no honour even though their behaviour of victimizing those they are racist towards can often be quite predictable.  The danger of racism, and other prejudices, is that when a number of homicidally, likewise racist individuals get together, even though these individuals may be extremely violent, the members of the group can be assured of this violent nature being directed outside the group.  The result is that racism can allow groups of violent people to work together towards murderous goals, something that non-prejudiced evil cannot achieve.  A non-prejudiced, homicidal individual would know full well that they would be on the murder list of anyone that was like themselves and so could never cooperate with others of their kind.  However, although the level of destruction of racists towards those they hate may be much greater than the level of destructive competition between each other, the members of the group still would not be able to trust each other to behave non-destructively.  Rather, violent groups of racists generally behave violently towards those they hate and non-violently but still destructively towards each other.  Now, many prejudicial individuals may believe that their prejudice is, in fact, a principle, that victimizing a particular type of person is a morally acceptable act, and that, therefore, they possess honour.  However, the belief in the rightness of an individual’s particular prejudice is always based on their hatred, not any ethical knowledge.  Rather, such people act to justify their hatreds by stressing any arguments that might support their hatred and ignoring any that counter them.  This lack of any ethical basis for their beliefs ensures that any such beliefs are self-serving, that the individual is only concerned with satisfying their own hatreds, not in doing right by other people, and so, since they only serve themselves, they could never be trusted to act in the interest of others, to behave non-destructively.  As such, prejudiced people generally do not achieve constructively competitive or non-competitive relations with others.

Now, there are numerous forms of real honour, each form resulting from a different set of principles that an individual could follow.  The problem with honour is that these principles necessary for an individual to have honour are ethical beliefs and, although such beliefs may be well meant, people’s beliefs are often incorrect.  An individual may have great honour, but not great wisdom, and as such they may very well end up doing wrong despite their best attempts at right.  One common form of honour is the word of honour in which an individual believes that it is ethically correct for people to keep their word no matter what.  Unfortunately, sometimes a promise can only be kept by doing something that is unethical.  This was a serious problem with historic japanese culture where honour was seen as the quality of an individual keeping their promise of loyalty to a leader at all costs.  This form of honour made japanese samurai particularly effective and desirable to hire since such solders could be trusted by their comrades and leader not to switch sides, a serious problem for a feudal nation where loyalties typically fluctuate with the tide of battle.  Therefore, holding onto this particular form of honour was good business sense; it ensured that the individual could get a good job.  However, by stressing this particular form of honour, japanese culture promoted samurai following their leader’s orders even when they knew full well that such orders were evil.  Consequently, the economical circumstances of that culture promoted a false set of ethics.  Another form of honour is pacifism.  Pacifists assume that all violence is a result of misunderstanding and fear, and that all people would choose to lay down their arms given a chance.  This view suggest that if one side were to put down its weapons the other would follow suit.  The first problem with this is that the other side, even if they were inclined towards peace, would never lay down their arms unless they could trust the honour of their opponent, which almost never happens.  They will always expect the show of non-violence to be a trick, that they would be stabbed in the back the second they let down their guard.  The second problem with pacifism is that not everyone is interested in peace, and with that reality of the world no one can afford to let down their guard.  Yet another form of honour is devotion to the letter of the law.  The success of this form of honour is similar to that of the word of honour in japanese culture in that people who follow this form of honour tend to be more successful in society.  People who follow the letter of the law do not get in trouble with the law, however, since justice and the law often diverge, an individual who follows justice at all costs would inevitably be imprisoned.  The result of this is that the leadership of the justice systems are heavily populated with those who follow legal honour, but are sparsely populated with those who possess just honour. 

Now, this is only a small sample of all the possible forms of honour, there being as many of them as there are well meant ethical beliefs.  Since most of these beliefs are incorrect, most of these honour types would fail to create the good their possessors strive towards.  In order to find a correct form of honour it is necessary to work out the truth of ethics.  Any honour based on this ethics would be correct.  Just honour is particularly interesting in this regard.  Justice is simply the act of ensuring that people get what they deserve, that good people get what they deserve and evil people get what they deserve.  Justice is ensuring that good people get good and that evil loses out, and so just honour is the devotion to ensuring, no matter what, that good is supported and evil, dealt with.  Now, exactly what good and evil deserve is a matter of ethical argument, however that good should get what it deserves and evil what it deserves is true by definition.  Therefore just honour is an ethically valid form of honour since justice is the satisfaction of ethics.  An improved understanding of ethics may change our view of justice, but it would not make the fact that justice is the satisfaction of ethics any less true.  The strength of just honour comes since, by good people knowing that the individual with this honour would ultimately do everything within their ability to support them, such people could trust this individual.  This individual could lie, use violence or break the law, but those who recognize the individual’s honour would know that if the individual were to do so, it would be out of necessity.  Because these people would know that the ultimate goal of this individual would always be to benefit them, they could trust that individual enough to support them, to lower their guard and treat the individual in a non-destructive manner.

In fact, the concept of just honour can be used as a basis for a sociological theory of ethics.  The question is, what would the most competitively beneficial form of justice be, what qualities within an individual could be defined as good or evil, and hence supported or punished, such that those who support these definitions of good and evil would gain the greatest competitive strength?  If we define a good individual as someone who genuinely strives to benefit other good people and an evil individual as someone who serves their own interests then we get a highly competitively beneficial situation.  If an individual genuinely strives to benefit good people then, by this definition of good, they would be benefiting those who would return the favour by striving to benefit them.  On the other hand, by punishing those who only, ultimately, serve their own self-interests, they would act to weaken or destroy those who would hurt or take advantage of them, those who would betray such an individuals beneficial behaviours.  It is honour that makes this system work.  For example, if an individual were to act by benefiting only those who have the ability to benefit them then, should those others lose that ability, such as through age or injury, then this individual would cease to support those others.  Because of this lack of honour, the lack of the quality of following an ethical belief no matter what, this individual could never be trusted to be their when it counts, and so there would be no reason for anyone to be there for them when this individual is down on their luck.  On the other hand, an individual who has the honour to always support those who would strive to support good even when those this individual would support lose the ability to exercise such support can be trusted to be there for other good people during the worst of times and so good people, defining this ethical honour as good, would be willing to be there for this individual.  As such, those who define good as the support, no matter what, of those who support good no matter what i.e. the honourable support of those who honourably support the beneficial behaviours of others, as well as the opposition of evil act to create a world in which people are there for each other no matter what.  This produces the ultimate in competitive advantage among such good people, an advantage that says that no matter how bad things might get for any particular individual the others would still strive to ensure that that individual is successful, to ensure that they would have a good and satisfactory life. 

Now, to this point we have discussed competitive strategy as it relates to nature and to individual people and small groups.  Chivalry is a constructively competitive strategy that developed for the military success, and hence survival of, feudal nations.  A feudal nation is a nation in which power is held by might, and is sustained only through an individual’s maintaining their military prowess.  Those who have the greatest fighting ability rise to power, and they only stay there so long as they maintain that superior ability.  The military weakness of such nations is that since they are split up into numerous kingdoms, with the leaders of those nations in constant conflict with each other, if those leaders were to compete destructively, killing each other off, there would soon be no warriors left to defend that nation from external threats.  The result of this is that those feudal nations that failed to develop constructively competitive systems of conflict were quickly overrun with invaders leaving only those nations that solved this problem.  The solution to this problem was either to abandon feudalism, which all nations in the end did by converting over to the monarchy system, or to develop chivalry.  Now, what chivalry is, is a code of conduct that says that whenever an individual has a conflict with a fellow member of their nation or another nation with similar chivalrous customs, they could settle that conflict through personal combat with that individual.  However, once their opponent was defeated that individual had to give that opponent the opportunity to concede defeat.  In this way, power struggles could be handled in a feudal manner, through military might, while leaving all the warriors alive so that they would be available to defend their nation from future threats.  In addition to this, chivalry also provided an environment in which warriors could get real combat experience and still stand a good chance of being alive to use it.  As such, feudal nations that managed to develop chivalry were able to develop and maintain significant numbers of experienced warriors, and so maintain their military strength.  The problem with chivalry is the same problem that appears with sparring animals discussed previously.  It only takes one individual who chooses to break this code, one warrior who would ask for mercy but not give it, the black knight, to ruin the whole system.  Since such an individual would kill other warriors when they win, but would be given mercy when they lose, a single such unchivalrous individual could kill many chivalrous warriors.  In this way, basic chivalry, in which the warrior always offers mercy, cannot ultimately succeed.  In order for chivalry to succeed, the warrior must deny mercy to those who prove to be unchivalrous; they must kill the black knight. 

Now, proper and improper competitive strategy are major issues with the success or failure of business and government.  A common belief of people is that increased corporate competition would result in lower product prices.  Such competition would increase a companies efforts to more efficiently produce since the lower their price the more people would choose their product over the competition.  However, competition also motivates them to cut corners and misrepresent their product, producing a shoddy product and passing it off as quality, sinking large amounts of money into advertisement in an effort to induce people to buy in spite of a high price and low quality.  The result is that even if the prices do drop, and typically they don’t, the quality of product people get for their money is lowered since a great deal of the money they pay is not going into the product, or even into product development, but rather into the product’s advertisement.  The second idea that competition prevents price gouging is also faulty.  Competition does make a company more concerned with its reputation, and so they would very much like to avoid being seen as cheating their customers.  However, such companies have suppliers, and when the suppliers are few and the companies many, the suppliers can gouge those companies, thereby making the product more expensive to produce and hence forcing the companies to raise their prices.  On the other hand, when there is little competition a company can get its supplies cheap and thereby would be able to produce an inexpensive product.  So potentially, the most beneficial situation for the general public is for reduced competition, ideally non-competition, within the corporate world; it is only our inability to trust the corporate world resulting from the current design of our economy, that companies are permitted to make money regardless of whether they have the publics best interests a heart, that prevents non-competition from working. 

Now, non-competition is, in fact, a major component of the modern corporate world.  The destructive competitive nature of the marketplace results from the competitive behaviours between companies; however, companies themselves exist since they are internal refuges from such competition.  The purpose of a company is to create an environment in which the workers and managers act to serve the goals and objectives of the president of that company.  Since this president’s job is to ensure the success of the company, which is achieved by out competing the competition, and since having the workers competing amongst each other destructively, undermining each other’s work, would act against this objective, such a president would have to act to prevent any such destructive competition.  As such, they would have to reprimand, punish or, if necessary and possible, outright fire any workers who persist in destructively competitive behaviours with their coworkers.  As a consequence, a corporate president acts to create a non-destructive environment, which allows the workers to devote their effort towards producing their product, and in this way the company can be sufficiently efficient to compete with other companies.  In addition to this, the promotion system of management acts to create a competitive environment in which managers compete by striving to be more successful in order to get promoted.  Since the president acts to prevent destructive behaviours, the managers are forced to compete constructively, thereby ensuring that these managers strive to better themselves as a means to attain promotion, therein making the company stronger as a whole.  Therefore, when a company is working properly it maintains an environment of constructive competition and non-competition, with constructive competition dominating over the managers and non-competition over the labourers. 

Of course, not all companies operate correctly.  A company’s proper non-destructive environment can break down do to a number of factors.  Incompetence or indifference on the part of the president is the most direct means of failure.  A president cannot directly create a non-destructive environment on their own, they need their managers to all be devoted to, and capable of, inducing such an environment.  In effect, the managers have to behave in the same manner as their president, only on a smaller scale.  Now, indifference and incompetence in the management are not the cause of failure in a company itself, rather they are symptoms of a failure of the president of that company to perform their job correctly.  It is the job of the president to ensure that their direct subordinates have the competence and devotion to produce a non-destructive environment, and if they don’t, to replace them.  If a company’s president is successful in this then the president’s subordinates will behave in the same way towards their subordinates, ensuring that those subordinates would also have the necessary competence and devotion.  This process will continue until it filters down the whole chain of command, and hence the entire company would be converted to a non-destructive nature.  Of course, for this process to begin in the first place, and to be maintained, the president has to be an individual with the necessary competence and devotion to produce such an environment.  Only once the president possesses these qualities will such qualities become supported, and hence come to dominate within the management. 

Another problem is that even if the president possesses these qualities, if their power to exercise them is taken from them, their capability would not matter.  Removing the authority of a president and their managers to fire or demote their direct subordinates would destroy any ability to create a non-destructive environment since those people who insist on destructive behaviours could not be removed from positions of power.  Such restrictions have generally been created by society since the ability to fire and demote are typically used within corrupt companies to serve the personal interest of particular managers, so by placing restrictions on the management such abuse is blocked.  But this arbitrary restriction not only prevents good people from being fired, it also protects the problem people, those whose actions destroy the company and/or make it an unsuitable work environment.  Stockholder votes can also reduce a president’s power by allowing their decisions to be revoked, or by allowing the stockholders to replace a competent president with someone who promises to increase their dividends, i.e. someone who appeals to their greed.  Also, leadership of companies by committees can prevent decisive decision and hence allow problem managers to remain within their positions of power long enough to do serious damage.  Further, committees can themselves become a source of destructive competition, there being no one to act on such committees to ensure that the members are restricted to non-destructive behaviours.  This problem generally appears within houses of representatives where arguments over government policy often turn personal, with the members trying to win their arguments, not by convincing other representatives with reason, but by attempting to discredit those who oppose them. 

One final situation that can sometimes prevent a president from inducing a non-destructive environment is if there exists a strong separation in the skills or location of two layers of management.  In order for a manager to access the competence and best interests of their subordinates those managers must, firstly, be exposed to those subordinates.  If the manager is separated physically from their subordinates then those subordinates would begin to act predominately on their own.  They may tolerate destructively competitive behaviours by their subordinates and, even if they don’t, even if they promote a non-destructive environment within their departments, with their boss away and hence there being no one to prevent destructive competition between them and their peers, destructive competition would appear between all the individual departments effected.  The effect of a separation of skills between a manager and their subordinates isn’t as sever as the effect of separation; however, a manager must to be able to assess the success or failure of their subordinates.  If they do not possess a reasonably good understanding of the work that their subordinates are doing then such an assessment could not be carried out.  Also, when a manager doesn’t understand the work of their subordinates, this lack of understanding will typically act to promote the manager to stay away from their subordinates since they would have little to contribute, and hence a separation of skills often leads to a physical separation.  These are the main difficulties that appear with managerial and political appointments.  If the stockholders act by voting in a new management for a company out of the belief that such a change would increase their profits, the new management would be unfamiliar with the company, and possibly even with the industry, they enter.  This unfamiliarity would act to create a division of skills, with the new management not knowing how business is conducted within the company they enter.  A common response to this is to force the company to take up the practices of the new management, but such an act produces great resentment within the company.  This results since, for one, the new management, by doing so, is showing their laziness, expecting everyone else to adjust to them but not the other way around, and secondly, if the management could be replaced once it could be replaced again, and so the workers have every reason to believe that the changes expected of them will be temporary.  Should the entire upper management of a company have to be replaced, something that must be avoided if at all possible, then the proper behaviour on the part of that new management would be to adjust to the company’s business practices.  The problem of division of skills is greatest with political appointment.  At least with a managerial replacement the management would typically still have come from a corporate background, however an appointed individual may have no skills in the particular organization they enter.  As such a division between the appointed upper management and the rest of the organization typically forms within government organizations resulting in destructively competitive behaviours between all the affected departments. 

This theory of ethics is not in conflict with the psi-based theory of ethics I also present.  The psi-based theory involves the concept of respect, a psi induced motivation for an individual to genuinely strive to support good people.  This respect has the same effect as honour of inducing good people to support other good people and to punish evil, and so gives the same competitive advantages to the individual who uses it.  Rather, in the same way as pleasure and stimulus are psi and brain experiences, respectively, that push an individual towards very similar goals and hence usually complement and rarely conflict with each other, respect and ethical honour likewise lead to similar consequences and hence generally support each other.

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