> If there's one thing that consistently fosters innovation and progress it's competition.
That statement is a bit of a truism, isn't it? If you squint hard enough, you can call most things a competition. If all else fails, in the sexual marketplace because financial success is an indicator of romantic success for males, who happen to have driven a lot of the innovation up to this point.
It also ignores the nuance to be found in whether and where to focus on public investment versus private investment, for one. I don't think you can really sensibly frame all public investment as competition, unless you're stretching it to the amorphous "international competition", in which case the principle is dangerously close to being unfalsifiable.
I'm not saying competition has no role to play, but where are inspiration, the joy of creation, altruism and wanting to abolish frustration and greater problems? We don't just have selfish genes.
