The Competition Obsession: a philosophy of non-competitive living by Steven H. Homel, 1980 Book Review by William B. Lindley This book offers a refreshing dissenter's view on a major feature of American culture: competition. The author challenges the widely held beliefs: that excellence is achieved only through competition; that evolution is a story of a competitive struggle for existence; that free enterprise and competitive enterprise are synonymous; that competitive sports are the best route to physical fitness; and that Little League and Pop Warner football are good for preparing children for adult life. He explores competition in these and other areas of life, such as marriage, family, and friendships, the customer-salesman relationship, education, and how we entertain ourselves. He notes that competition is intimately tied to envy, that ugly emotion few of us talk about and many hide with the facade of "good sportsmanship". It rewards relative performance, not absolute excellence. It results in a few winners and many losers. It is not the royal road to high self- esteem. Competition presupposes limited resources-the "zero-sum game"-and the author correctly notes that humanity has made its tremendous progress by creating and discovering new resources. Diversity is a key to long-term survival both in nature and in business and other human activities. His alternative to competition thus is improvement. His slogan: Improve and live; compete and die. I have a few disagreements. Competition vs. adaptation is probably not a clear-cut dichotomy in evolution. Superior adaptation within an ecological niche is competitive; similarly, a higher-quality product, while a step away from competition in the sense of everybody making the same widgets and fighting it out in the market, will drive out a lower-quality product, and this is a competitive act. The author believes that even monopolies will fail if they don't satisfy the customer; this is true only if the product is not a necessity, if the option of doing without is a real one. The whole discussion appears simple and overly polarized; I'd like to see more diversity in the presentation. But these are quibbles. The author has offered us a challenge to think, in an area where there has been too little serious thought.