In this blog post, we look at the harmful effects of excessive competition and alternative perspectives for coexistence through youth suicide, elbow society, and the structure of capitalism.
In November 2024, sad news came from a female high school student who took the Korean College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT). The student, who had consistently maintained high grades, took her own life because her preliminary exam results fell short of her expectations. Cases like this, where students make such extreme choices before even taking their first steps into society, are often only briefly mentioned and do not become major issues. Can this really be considered normal? Could this social phenomenon be the result of excessive competition?
The phrase “survival of the fittest” means that only those who adapt to their environment can survive, and it is a phrase often used to justify competition. This theory is an important theory that supports the evolution of living things, so it is not wrong to say that competition plays an important role in the natural world. However, competition in today’s society often goes beyond what is considered normal and causes various negative effects. It has long been known that the suicide rate among young people, who are just beginning to dream, is abnormally high, and there are frequent cases of breadwinners taking extreme measures due to reasons such as forced retirement. It is said that a certain amount of tension and stress is beneficial in life, but in Korea in particular, the tension and stress caused by excessive competition seems to be far from “moderate.”
To help understand this, let’s consider running, which is one of the most common examples of competition. If a runner in second place is motivated by seeing the person in front of them and is able to achieve a better result, then competition has clearly led to a better outcome for that person, and they would say that competition is effective. However, this is only true when each person is focused on their own task without interfering with the other. If the runners start to obstruct each other, it becomes excessive competition. In fact, there is a term that describes this phenomenon using running as an analogy. It is “Ellenbogengesellschaft.” This is German for “elbow society,” and it is a sarcastic term for people who elbow those trying to pass them in a marathon. If a person disguises a foul as a running posture, the spectators will not know that the person has committed a foul. That person will easily come in first place, and if they do, they will receive applause and cheers from the crowd as the result of a fair competition. Applying this to society, people who will stop at nothing to achieve success rationalize their actions in the name of competition, disregarding fairness and morality.
This is not the only negative effect of excessive competition. When a market for a certain item is formed, the market is small at first, and competition among sellers leads to a healthy competition to improve quality. From the consumer’s point of view, this is the ideal situation. However, as more and more sellers enter the market, competition becomes fierce, and eventually they resort to extreme measures such as lowering prices abnormally, which leads to a decline in quality and the emergence of cheap products. A market with such excessive competition is called a “red ocean.”
Despite this, we have no choice but to compete and encourage competition. This is because we live under a capitalist system. Capitalism is a social and economic system in which capitalists who own the means of production are guaranteed production activities for the purpose of profit, and in this economic system, those who lose in competition are inevitably eliminated, so it is a structure in which people have no choice but to compete, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. However, is surpassing others and surviving alone really the true victory in this system?
Let’s look for the answer in economics. Anyone who has studied economics will have heard of the “production possibility frontier (PPF).” This is a graph showing the quantity of goods that can be produced in a given time. In other words, when there are two goods, the graph starts at the point where only one good is produced and ends at the point where only the other good is produced. At this point, if the graph for A is always above the graph for B, then A will always be able to produce more goods than B. Therefore, in this case, A is the winner in the production competition. However, this is only true when there is no trade. What would happen if A and B specialized in one good each and traded with each other? One might think that A would suffer a loss, but in fact, both A and B would be able to consume more goods after trading than if they had not traded at all. When someone in an advantageous position coexists with someone in a disadvantageous position, better results can be achieved. Isn’t this what we should be striving for? A society where everyone benefits from appropriate competition, rather than the endless competition represented by the “elbow society.” It may sound like a dream, but in this irrational society, I can only hope that it is not unreasonable to hope for such an ideal.
