Blog #100 – Competition: What’s Socially Desirable and What Isn’t.

Blog #100 – Competition: What’s Socially Desirable and What Isn’t. ,

In the discussion here , the phrase “winners and losers,” as it is understood in day-to-day exchange by Donald Trump. There are other definitions that are not insidious. Not every competition that has winners and losers is bad.

Sports are the classic example of what can be desirable and healthy competition. It is of the essence of such competition that the competitors go by understood and fair rules, and that they start out as equals, and even as friends, recognizing the outcome as just, and it their earned achievement that is celebrated that is celebrated, not the loss of the losers. That achievement is the greater if the winner’s achievement is narrowly followed by the achievement of the loser – a 10 to 2 victory in a true sport is less noteworthy than a 10-9 victory. Above all, victory in a fair competition should not be used to justify a grossly unequal reward, certainly in the public sector, where winner take all is not a desirable result for a narrow victory. Both the rules of the competition and the reward for success should be democratically determined and agreed. The precise drawing of lines between desirable and undesirable competition and between fair and unfair treatment of winners and losers may be hard to spell out in advance and vary by context, but at the extremes social injustice is usually easily discernible. When, as in so many economic relationships, the winner wins through the exploitation and domination of the loser, winning is nothing to celebrate.

Perhaps one might define the undesirable social uses of “winners and losers” by four criteria:

1. Clearly if in the competition, the winner has started out from a position superior to that of the loser, if the win is the result of violation of the “all men are created equal” rule there is a problem. The examination must then investigate the circumstances that permitted the winner to win; was it by using some unjust advantage that the winner won. If a slight woman loses a weightlifting contest to a heavily-built man, or if the scion or a rich family is able to outbid an-up and-coming but poor architect to win an auction of piece of real estate, then the competition the contest and the winning is undesirable.
2. Has the achievement of the “winners” reduced the achievement of the “losers?” In a one-mile race, if the winner achieves his/her speed in one minute, and others require more than that ,the time the losers achieved is not reduced by the time the winner achieved they are not the slower for the winners speed. The one achievement is not at the expense of the other. In Donald Trump’s world, every real estate transaction in which he engages and “wins” means that someone else has lost, and the lost is the mirror consequence of the win.

3. Is the reward to the winner such that it will deprive the loser of a benefit that it is socially desirable that he or she have? Is the reward a socially desirable good that is in scarce supply, so the winner necessarily deprives the loser of something it is desirable the loser have? A medal for winning a race does not deprive the loser of anything the loser needs or ought to have. However, if the winner gains great wealth or necessary accessibility from winning and the loser is deprived of an adequate income or accessibility because of it, it is competition with an undesirable prize. If there is a housing shortage and inexpensive apartment on a desirable location is torn down and a luxury tower built by a developer that won the competition bidding for the lot on which they are built the competition is undesirable.
4. Has the winner won by unfairly capturing something to which the lower has equal or better claim? Is it the result of a taking by force, or by exploitation in which the winner makes a profit by the exploitation of the labor of the loser? The definition of “unfair” or “equal” claim may then be debated, but if it is a greed taking advantage of a housing shortage to charge a rent unaffordable to the tenant, then the landlord winning the contest for the value of lease is undesirable.

This blog is one of the set:
Blog 98 – The Political Implications of ‘Winning’ and ‘Losing’,
Blog 99 – Social Competition without ‘Winners’ and ‘Losers
Blog 100 – Competition: What’s Socially Desirable and What Isn’t.

Blog #99 – “Winning” – Is It Really Desirable?

**** Blog #99 – “Winning” – Is It Really Socially Desirable? [1]
A society that writes “WINNING” on its banner tramples on any goal of equality. “Winning” in most usages (in Neo-Lib language [2] by definition produces losers; that is its goal. Yet society exists, and governments are created, to implement, the belief that all men are created equal. A leader who revels in winning shows a limited concern for his fellows. Winners win, in real political life, not because of their greater achievements, their greater contribution to the welfare of humanity, their superior morality or service to the public interest, but because of their coincidental fortune in birth, location, timing, greater aggressiveness — yes, their lesser concern for the losers helps. It is the winners who create losers; the losers do not lose voluntarily.

Today’s winners already have excellent health care: health care for all is needed precisely for the losers. The winners already have adequate housing, food, closing, education, recreational opportunities. Social justice, the Declaration of Independence, and the interests of humanity all require that the losers be protected in their claim to the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The goal is not to have more winners, but to have less, indeed no, losers in the exercise of those rights.
In public policy terms, care for losers might be of at least as great, if not more, concern than care for winners.
****
Winning and losing have their place. Not every competition that has winners and losers is bad. Sports are the classic example of what can be desirable and healthy competition. It is of the essence of such competition that the competitors go by understood and fair rules, and that they start out as equals, and even as friends, recognizing the outcome as just, and it their earned achievement that is celebrated that is celebrated, not the loss of the losers. That achievement is the greater if the winner’s achievement is narrowly followed by the achievement of the loser – a 10 to 2 victory in a true sport is less noteworthy than a 10-9 victory. Above all, victory in a fair competition should not be used to justify a grossly unequal reward, certainly in the public sector, where winner take all is not a desirable result for a narrow victory. Both the rules of the competition and the reward for success should be democratically determined and agreed. The precise drawing of lines between desirable and undesirable competition and between fair and unfair treatment of winners and losers may be hard to spell out in advance and vary by context, but at the extremes social injustice is usually easily discernible. When, as in so many economic relationships, the winner wins through the exploitation and domination of the loser, winning is nothing to celebrate.

Perhaps one might define a socially undesirable system fostering “winners and losers” by four criteria:
Clearly if in the competition the winner has started out from a position superior to that of the loser, if the win is the result of violation of the “all men are created equal” rule there is a problem. The examination must then investigate the circumstances that permitted the winner to win; was it by using some unjust advantage that the winner won. If a slight woman loses a weightlifting contest to a heavily-built man, or if the scion or a rich family is able to outbid an-up and-coming but poor architect to win an auction of piece of real estate, then the competition the contest and the winning is undesirable.
Has the achievement of the “winners” reduced the achievement of the “losers?” In a one-mile race, if the winner achieves his/her speed in one minute, and others require more than that, the time the losers achieved is not reduced by the time the winner achieved; they are not the slower for the winner’s speed. The one achievement is not at the expense of the other. In Donald Trump’s world, every real estate transaction in which he engages and “wins” means that someone else has lost, actually or of a potential, and the loss is the mirror consequence of the win.

Is the reward to the winner such that it will deprive the loser of a benefit that it is socially desirable that he or she have? Is the reward a socially desirable good that is in scarce supply, so the winner necessarily deprives the loser of something it is desirable the loser have? A medal for winning a race does not deprive the loser of anything the loser needs or ought to have. However, if the winner gains great wealth or necessary accessibility from winning and the loser is deprived of an adequate income or accessibility because of it, it is competition with an undesirable prize. If there is a housing shortage and inexpensive apartment on a desirable location is torn down and a luxury tower built by a developer that won the competition bidding for the lot on which they are built the competition is undesirable.
Has the winner won by unfairly capturing something to which the lower has equal or better claim? Is it the result of a taking by force, or by exploitation in which the winner makes a profit by the exploitation of the labor of the loser? The definition of “unfair” or “equal” claim may then be debated, but if it is a greed taking advantage of a housing shortage to charge a rent unaffordable to the tenant, then the landlord winning the contest for the value of lease is undesirable.
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[1] This blog was clearly inspired by Donald Trump ’ frequent divsion of people into winners and losers “ “There are two kinds […] of people. Winners aren’t losers. They’re winners … like me [Trump].” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2015/12/17/kimmel-ghostwrites-book-trump-winners-arent-losers/77468060/
[2] See Blog #102, forthcoming, for Neo-Lib and Alternative meanings of the word.

[For related discussion, see, at : pmarcuse.wordpress.com:
Blog #98 – Winning and Losing as Political Language
Blog #100 – Competition and Socially Desirable Winners and Losers
And, forthcoming, Blog #102 – Neo-Lib Language — The Hidden Politics of Word Usage

Blog 98 – Winners and Losers in Trump’s World

Blog #98 – Winners and Losers in Trump’s World

There are winners and losers in life, says Donald Trump; that’s just the way it is. Everyone can’t be a winner; some people just inevitably have be losers. That’s certainly true of chess, or the javelin throw, in the Olympics, or budding young entrepreneurs in information technology. But is it true of the game of life? Indeed, is life a game? What is at the heart of his appeal to his following is: “You can be rich just like me, you shouldn’t be a loser, stick with me and someone else will be the loser. Is speaking of “winners” and “losers” in the game of life simply an unthinking application of a metaphor, or does it have a practical political meaning when those like Trump use it, a meaning that is heavily conservative and morally and ethically questionable?

I believe using the terms “winner” and “loser ” as Trump uses them is indeed direct and insidious propaganda to justify a particular economic, political and social system in which in the winners, defined as the successful wealthy and powerful, appropriately are entitled to that wealth and power, and the losers may be commiserated with, perhaps even helped out if they have lost too much or been left with too little in the inevitable struggle for survival, but the arrangements that produce winners and losers are simply accepted as inevitable by anyone who is willing to be a realist and not a starry-eyed-idealist. The language is even more insidious when it uses “born losers,” those who are born to lose, who do not lose because of any action of the winners, winners who have no responsibility for the losses of he losers. Winning and losing is a matter for having the right dna. It has nothing to do with justice or fairness.

Challenging a concept such a Trump’s of winning and losing in fact raises critical questions of public policy, of the just distribution of wealth and power, of how values are manipulated, of how the society functions and could function.

“Winners,” in Donald Trump’s sense (from here on that sense is in quotes) describes individuals who have gained at the expense of others, others who have correspondingly really lost –in reality as well as in Trump’s sense of losers “losers,” gamers who are the worse off for having been forced to play the game and surrender something of what they had to the winners .

Winners, in a social justice sense (no quotes) should be those who end up justly better off. If there were social justice which governed who won and who lost, everyone one would be a winner (no quotes) and none would be a loser (no quotes). there would be Losers. As even most honest conservatives today acknowledge, our society is rich enough to provide adequately for all of its members with no one having to suffer because of absolute shortages of goods or services.

“Winners” are socially unjust because their actions are taken at the expense of and with no regard for the consequences for the losers. Losers really lose, although in limited cases losers may gain some disproportionately small benefits accompanying their loss. Clément Théry, for instance, describes the relationship between winners and losers in the housing market as “adversarial bargaining bordering on predation.”
A classic example is the winning/losing relationship between landlords and tenants.

Concretely:

Relationships between landlords and lower-income tenants reflect] asymmetries accompanied by adversarial bargaining bordering on predation. Similar practices exist in other segments of the rental housing market. In low-income minority neighborhoods, they are not marginal, but one of the central forms of economic behavior. [1] Recognition of cliques’ predatory strategies reshapes our understanding of landlord–tenant conflicts, predator and prey, gentrification, and even subsidized housing.” “the incivility of tenant–landlord relationships. Landlords display their unbending forcefulness in pursuing their interests through verbal violence with tenants).” “Predators look for rich, fat objects of prey, not deprived and skinny ones. There are more resources to be seized by preying on a landlord or a bank than by targeting low-income minority tenants.”

A socially just society, as here understood, would be a society in which in reality – that is, under the existing dominant social economic, political and social arrangements of the prevalent society, no one was deprived of their fair share of the resources of society, in which some winning would not have to be to the detriment of others who lose. Such n ideal society of course postulates enough for all, but that is situation which is easily within range of achievement in advanced industrial societies such as Trump’s United States even now, even if spread over all countries on the globe.

This blog is one of the set:
Blog 98 – ‘Winning’ and ‘Losing” n Trump’s World
Blog 99 – “Winning” – Really Desirable?
Blog 100 – Competition and Socially desirable Winners and Losers