Development of the State

71:5.1Com­pe­ti­tion is es­sen­tial to so­cial prog­ress, but com­pe­ti­tion, un­reg­u­lated, breeds vi­o­lence. In cur­rent so­ci­ety, com­pe­ti­tion is slowly dis­plac­ing war in that it de­ter­mines the in­di­vid­ual’s place in in­dus­try, as well as de­cree­ing the sur­vival of the in­dus­tries them­selves. (Mur­der and war dif­fer in their sta­tus be­fore the mores, mur­der hav­ing been out­lawed since the early days of so­ci­ety, while war has never yet been out­lawed by man­kind as a whole.)

71:5.2The ideal state un­der­takes to reg­u­late so­cial con­duct only enough to take vi­o­lence out of in­di­vid­ual com­pe­ti­tion and to pre­vent un­fair­ness in per­sonal ini­tia­tive. Here is a great prob­lem in state­hood: How can you guar­an­tee peace and quiet in in­dus­try, pay the taxes to sup­port state power, and at the same time pre­vent tax­a­tion from hand­i­cap­ping in­dus­try and keep the state from be­com­ing par­a­sit­i­cal or tyran­ni­cal?

71:5.3Through­out the ear­lier ages of any world, com­pe­ti­tion is es­sen­tial to pro­gres­sive civ­i­liza­tion. As the evo­lu­tion of man pro­gresses, co-op­er­a­tion be­comes in­creas­ingly ef­fec­tive. In ad­vanced civ­i­liza­tions co-op­er­a­tion is more ef­fi­cient than com­pe­ti­tion. Early man is stim­u­lated by com­pe­ti­tion. Early evo­lu­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by the sur­vival of the bi­o­log­i­cally fit, but later civ­i­liza­tions are the bet­ter pro­moted by in­tel­li­gent co-op­er­a­tion, un­der­stand­ing fra­ter­nity, and spir­i­tual broth­er­hood.

71:5.4True, com­pe­ti­tion in in­dus­try is ex­ceed­ingly waste­ful and highly in­ef­fec­tive, but no at­tempt to elim­i­nate this eco­nomic lost mo­tion should be coun­te­nanced if such ad­just­ments en­tail even the slight­est ab­ro­ga­tion of any of the ba­sic lib­er­ties of the in­di­vid­ual.