Competition v. Collaboration.

Lets consider a scenario to compare co-operation and competition.Say a department manager decides it will be a good idea to hold a monthly contest offering 1,000 dollars to the winner. At the end of the first month, Ms. Jones has won by a narrow margin the most clients to the firm and wins the 1,000 dollar bonus. 2nd month comes out roughly the same, Ms. Jones again wins by a small margin and again wins the $1,000 bonus.By the 3rd and 4th month Morale in the work place has Plummeted, Ms. Jones has become very unpopular with her co-workers and by month 5 and 6, several good employees have left the firm.Why should this scenario play out like this and what caused it? you first need to look at the logical incentives that this competition created. Is it logical for Ms. Jones to co-operate with her competitors? Of course it is not. It is in Ms. Jone's best interest to undermine her competitors in the work place every chance she gets. As the competition goes on, Ms. Jones is recognized and promoted, but several co-workers claim she has stolen clients from them and etc, and so while there was a short term boost in the beginning of the competition, the logical conclusion plays out. The competition pits co-workers against each other- causes stress and mistrust in the work place. And here we can draw an important distinction.Is Ms. Jones who is winning these competitions, being successful or is she being Victorious? There is a big difference between the two because Success does not require a loser. You do not need to fail, for me to succeed but you need to Lose to for me to be victorious. Competition in the work place, creates stress to perform, mistrust of others as mentioned above because it is Logical to mistrust some one who benefits from your misfortunes/failures and so on, which by the way creates more stress. And for the firm as a whole, in the long run is worse off while Ms. Jones did advance her self in the firm- the firm it self has lost talent and eventually losses reputation. This is no different in schools or sports or any kind of activity which requires another person to fail, so that you can be victorious. All of these kinds of activities create a logical grounds to mistrust other people. So we expand this out to the societal level.If in society, we say " its a dog eat dog world" what we are doing is training our selves to be competitive. Compete for jobs, compete in traffic, compete with each other in day to day lives over ultimately petty things. We see the results of this in the real world. People who are unfriendly,always in a hurry, always under stress to be better and faster.... work longer. Our corporate enterprises profit immensely from exploiting loop holes in laws, cheating taxes and cheating each other be it through patent laws or through out right exploitation. In a society that is built to compete, competition runs the show from top to bottom. We have made in our western society, everything a race. Everything a contest and as a result we are the most stressed people on the planet, we Americans. We still work more hours than any one else in the developed world, we are paid less in terms of benefits and social protections tan anyone else.. we have the highest instances of High blood pressure,diabetes and mood disorders than anyone else in the world.Competition has created a morally and ethically bankrupt society in the United States and where ever it is implemented enmass. In Japan, there was a time when High school students would commit suicide for failing to get into a good enough college... They would compete endlessly in tests and etc with their their classmates and though the result was, on paper, good national scores on benchmark tests.. it came with an extremely heavy price. Nervous break downs in young adults where and still are common places. To this day, Suicide is the leading cause of death in Young men. So where are the great benefits? We live in a society that has much and values nothing, takes everything for granted.. always pushing for more and always willing to exploit and cheat and under cut even those who are suppose to be on the same team to get ahead of the rest. Competition has been the bed rock of our society since the industrial revolution and it has not done for us, what it promised It has created a world of victors and losers, not a world of sucess.