When most people think about competition in economics, they think about productivity and the cost of goods produced., but there is a lot more. I will give some examples in this blog.
There used to be a popular saying, "As rich as an Argentine" and it was true. That was back before about 1950. Why was that? I think that it was because Argentina had so much natural resources per person in the form of grass lands that they could put out a cow and a bull then wait a couple of years and then harvest all that free beef. They did not have to do any real work, but there was more to it. At that time most of the world was poor and would work for very low wages. Almost every family in Argentina had a maid. I had one when I lived there. Wealth is a competitive thing. You can't be wealthy if everyone is wealthy. How could you then afford a maid or gardener? Getting the message?
Look at another place, New Zealand. I stayed with some farm families on both islands and they were very wealthy. Like Argentina, they had all kinds of land that naturally grew fine grass that their thousands of sheep could eat. All they had to do was to move them from one field to another, shear them and harvest a few for our American table. The average net worth of a New Zealand family is several times that of the USA.
How about Saudi Arabia? Are they rich and do most families have maids? Where do they get their maids and gardeners? They are imported from much poorer countries. Notice that they do not import their workers from Sweden or Norway. Where does their wealth come from? The USA actually has more oil than Saudi Arabia, but we also have many more people to divide that oil up between.
Notice that all three of the these countries have something in common, natural resources and the world has poverty where they can import their workers. Is that what the USA is now doing at our Southern border? You tell me, but it looks very similar. What happens when those immigrants become richer? Will we have to keep allowing more in? How many mouths will we then have to feed from our oil resources? Will the USA still be as rich?
In a prior blog I stressed the "end game" and I think that most of you can see that the USA and the world is dancing toward that same "end game". The Green Movement is not the solution, it is population control as in the three cases above, plus allowing those who do not want to control their populations to remain poor and thus can provide maids and gardeners for those responsible countries. those are brutal facts that we need to recognize.
PS--I guess that for our economic system to work correctly, we need both winners and losers.
