It is this sense of self and of boundary that makes the process of evolution so unpleasant to many. The bacterial Kingdom continues today. It has been stable for a very long time, and will probably be so for a long time to come. It has its limits, ones it seems unlikely ever to transcend. Nevertheless, I find some comfort in it as an alternative to the conflict and pain and death we see in evolution among the metazoans.
Corporations do compete.
Unlike bacteria, corporations exist across an immense range of sizes and can be hierachical. As such, they have a capacity for complexity that does not exist in the bacterial model. And yet, like bacteria, their competition is mainly a matter of knowledge, and knowledge need never be lost. As with the bacterial paradigm, the corporate model maintains only low thresholds between Selves. Our computers are becoming more and more powerful.