Competition is superior to cooperation as a means of achieving excellence

My opponent is new to the DDO site. Welcome! I'm looking forward to a good debate. Con has selected the Lincoln-Douglas (LD) high school debate topic for the 2009-2010 season. While the topic is familiar to high school debaters, it is new to me, and I think it is an interesting one. I won't use the official LD style, which was not specified as a condition for the debate, but I will try to use something similar. I accept Con's definitions of the six key terms. I accept "general welfare" as the standard. I will begin with two affirmative contentions, then address Con's contentions. A1. The only practical way to determine "excellence" is by competition There are some exceptions, but in almost all cases the method or product that is best cannot be determined without experimentation and improvement. Products only evolve towards excellence under competitive pressure. Consider smart phones: Motorola invented the Droid[tm] to compete with Apple's iPhone[tm]. The original iPhone was a fine product, but it lacked multi-tasking. The Droid added that feature and also a higher resolution screen. Apple brought out the iPhone 4 which added those features. But the iPhone 4 has a problem with signal reception. Apple's first response was to tell customers to hold the phone in a certain way to avoid the problem. The Droid doesn't have that problem, but the Droid doesn't have a cam on the front which the iPhone 4 does ... and so competition continues. Without competition there would be little reason to seek improvements. Would it have improved the general welfare if Motorola had not decided to compete? Clearly not, because no one would be offering a different concept of "high standards." Could a government agency have invented the iPhone in the first place without competitive pressure? We can judge that by looking at the productive outputs of government agencies. They have no pressing need to innovate, because without competition anything they do can be judged "excellent" without worries of someone else bettering them. The problem lies in knowing what the "general welfare" is and what the "good qualities" are that lead to excellence. In the smart phone example, no one group knows in advance the relative importance of multi-tasking, two cams, screen resolution, and signal reception ... and dozens of other features. Only competition determines that. Moreover, competition provides a variety of solutions satisfying different definitions of what constitutes excellence. A2. Only authoritarianism can suppress competition When a group reaches a consensus, it is natural that someone will disagree and want to set out to provide a solution that the person thinks is better. The model of cooperation does cannot allow competition, so the potential competitor must be suppressed. In all known examples of "cooperation" on a large scale, Dear Leader (some authoritarian figure) decides what constitutes the general welfare. Con acknowledges this implicitly in citing "oppressive and inefficient Communist government." Con does not acknowledge that this is an inherent and inescapable problem of so-called "cooperative" approaches. In the competitive model, there must also be a means of reaching a specific solution to a problem for a team to pursue. The difference is that anyone who feels strongly that the solution is wrong can leave and become a competitor or join a competing team. N1. Con claims "Cooperation focuses on everyone" There is no such thing as focusing on everyone, because "focus" means narrowing down to one thing, while "everyone" means expanding to multiple viewpoints and considerations. It does mean disallowing competition. N2. Con claims "Competition requires cooperation" Competition requires a level of cooperation on each of the competing approaches. That's fine. and it doesn't contradict the ultimate use of competition as a means of achieving excellence. It is only when competition is suppressed that we lose the pursuit of excellence. Without competition, either Dear Leaders ideas are imposed or consensus thinking is entrenched. Con contends that a marketplace requires cooperation. A marketplace requires some minor cooperation, but it predominantly requires competitors providing diverse ideas and products. Those competing offers are not anticipated by either an authoritarian leader or a voted consensus. The developers do not know what will best promote the general welfare, and the users do not know ahead of time what best serves them. Only a competitive marketplace sorts out what is best. N3. Con claims "Cooperation stands alone" Since cooperation requires the highest level of working together, the idea that it stands alone is odd. It is only "alone" in the sense that "cooperation suppresses dissent." Con's points to cooperation being better for things like emergency relief to Haiti. In those cases there is little dispute over what the short term objectives are. If one gets to a longer term objective, say, rebuilding Haiti, competitive projects would be superior, because no one is sure what works best. "Cooperation" ensures that group-think dominates and unconventional thinking is suppressed. Con's only other example is in personal relationships. "Excellence" in a personal relationship is defined solely by the people involved, a small number. The "general welfare" is not at issue. Because there are only a few people involved, most often two, and there no concept of excellence beyond what the people work out. That's not like developing a product for a market where competing solutions are offered, and some succeed and others fail. It's not comparable to any situation involving large groups. ------------------- Competition is critical to achieving excellence because no one knows in advance what best serves the general welfare. Without competition, there is no way to guarantee that the authoritarian or consensus solution arrived as a product of "cooperation" will be improved. With competition, the marketplace determines what it wants, not some elite. The general welfare may be best served by having multiple products or solutions suiting different situations. Only competition provides the right combination of solutions.