The Anubistic uselessness of competition
The Prophet, as is well known, is a doddering old fool, sorry, a fan of Korean dramas...
by The Prophet — 2026-01-15
1 Speaking of “fighting against others”, it is worth pausing a moment on the business of “competition”.
2 The Prophet, as is well known, is a doddering old fool fan of Korean dramas.
3 These series often portray "powerful" families in which the children are set in competition with one another to grab the top job.
4 What follows is disaster: everyone hates everyone, nobody cooperates, the family falls apart and the company takes serious damage.
5 As is well known, companies work when their goals are long-term and when they manage to make the private interests of each player in the company coincide with those of the company.
6 The “competition” between those children ends up harming the company too, because the private interest does not coincide with the company's.
7 In short, everybody loses.
8 The Prophet has never liked games or competition, because when he lost he didn't have much fun, and when he won he was sorry that someone else had lost.
9 (Yes, the Prophet has always been a doddering fool.)
10 In the same way, at work, he did his best to cooperate with everyone without giving a damn who was or wasn't making a “career”.
11 In recent years we hear more and more about “competitiveness”, “competition”, skills and so on...
12 Now we are told that the idea of healthy competition is the basis of the healthy growth of an economy: go to the supermarket, though, and a few doubts creep in... what the fuck are a hundred different toothpastes doing on the shelves?
What the fuck do we need three hundred different detergents for?
13 Likewise, what in the holy fuck do we need several thousand car models with at least a thousand different engines on the market for?
14 All the better, they'll say, more choice!
15 But what if the cars are all so alike you can't even tell them apart any more?
16 Weren't we told, a while back, that standardisation was the key to higher quality and lower costs?
17 So where did it go?
18 There are several industries where marketing accounts for as much as 50% of net revenue.
19 Do you really buy products in order to pay more for the advertising than for the product?
20 Is this the result of healthy competition? Hmm...
21 The Prophet realises he has turned this into a bit of a free-for-all, but it's worth it, because there are players who are not hidden in the least who are distorting the whole so-called “market”.
22 Back to the main subject: competition.
23 Leaving aside that in socialist countries like Italy you have to hand everything over to the State, so why the fuck would you bother competing, who or what is this competition actually for?
24 At first glance it seems logical and useful to all of us that everyone should compete so as to “give more”.
25 But in reality I don't see a shortage of anything, given the hundreds of toothpastes.
26 “Competition makes for better rivalry, which lowers costs for the consumer!”
27 Really?
28 Has anyone ever seen a price go down? The Prophet hasn't.
29 He adores Anubis regularly while looking at prices.
30 The only thing going down is the quality of the products: the price goes up.
31 Clearly there is someone responsible behind it, and it is not the market as such.
32 There was a time when inside a company people talked not about competition but about cooperation.
33 In those days there was no shortage of work, and even if someone was no genius but did his best, he found a good job that let him live very decently, no problem.
34 In group job interviews, what was carefully assessed was the ability to work properly with others to reach a made-up goal.
35 That way the whole triangle of knowing, knowing how to do and knowing how to be was assessed.
36 The company that works is the one where everyone cooperates, giving their best to achieve together the result of providing a good product or service.
37 It is not the one where everyone screws everyone else to show they are the coolest.
38 You only need a bit of common sense to see this.
39 The good owner/director/manager is responsible for the “relational climate” inside a company, and again, with only a bit of common sense, you can see that a good climate and good relations between the company's “players” are fundamental to the company's success.
40 So where does all this wanking about “competition” come from, and what is it for?
41 It is fucking obvious that people achieve more by cooperating than by screwing each other.
42 All reflections on the “whys” are left to the adepts, otherwise the Prophet could go on for 100 pages busting your “sacred spheres”.
43 Let the Adept put his ears up every time he is told he must be "competitive", because clearly something doesn't add up.
44 Let the good Anubist do his best and avoid "competing" as far as possible, because it clearly does harm both to himself and to others.