It Is Time To Drop The Mindset Of CompetitionsteemCreated with Sketch.

in busy •  6 years ago 

This is something that is ingrained in us from the time we are young. Growing up, we hear about competing in different things. Sports, beauty pageants, and classroom activities all foster the idea of "competition".

After all, the world is survival of the fittest.

Of course, this is nothing more than programming us for when we enter the "real world". There is competition for jobs, resources, and market share. We admire characteristics such as drive, cut throat mentality, and the desire to win. These are the people we put up on a pedestal.

The challenge with all of this is that is is nothing more than scarcity thinking. It is a system that is designed to breed maximum fear. If we do not join the crowd and give all we have to get ahead, we, by default, will be left behind.

We see the same thing in cryptocurrency and blockcain. We are entering an era where abundance will be the norm yet people still are looking at everything as a competition.

The problem with this is that it is not best for humanity.

Let us look at a prime example.

Steemit Killer

How many times have we heard this?

In my, almost, year and a half on this blockchain, there are so many things that were tossed out as a Steemit killers. Of course, as I write these words, none of them have come to pass. Even if those projects did work out, why would they have to "kill" Steemit? It is because that is our mindset.

To start, we will have to differentiate. Steemit here refers to the application. What is interesting, if you want to get down to it, Steemit's competition is on this blockchain. No need to look elsewhere. Busy.org along with @steempeak are two interfaces to use. Personally, I believe these light years ahead of Steemit.

On the mobile front there are also a number of alternatives for users. Hence, we see the situation expanding.

Of course, the latest is the big elephant in the room: Dan Larimer creating Steemit 2.0. This is surely going to put the nail in the coffin.

Competition at it's finest aka scarcity mentality.

A Better View

I do not view Steemit, Busy, and Steepeak in competition with each other. In fact, I use all three although Steemit is only for the exchange of SBD to STEEM. Nevertheless, I do different things on all three applications on a daily basis.

If Dan comes up with a Steemit 2, I might use that also. Copy/paste works real well on my computer and there might be some articles I post on here that I could also serve up on that one.

Why wouldn't everyone do that? If there is the possibility to earn a few tokens for the same work, one would be foolish to pass that up. From a personal branding perspective, cross pollinating is a smart idea.

Certainly, those who invested money into organizations have a much different perspective. They are looking for a ROI and this often comes by getting the business. Again, we see the outcome of the scarcity system we live in. From this perspective, there is no other approach but to "take what you can garner".

However, if we evolve into DAOs, then the mindset is much different. Then we have organizations that are community owned. Under this model, people are contributing to the enterprise with a different mindset. Growth does not have to come at the expense of others. In fact, the view becomes to embrace what others are doing since we are dealing with a great deal of open source.

We will see things fall by the wayside. Why? Because they did not interest the community. That said, there will be applications which are highly successful with very few users. Many will serve only a handful of people who will value that.

People like to take this idea to blockchains. Steem is fighting a battle against everyone else. After all, it is survival of the fittest. That is the mindset.

Let me ask you, is your home wi-fi in competition with the cellular networks? Are the wi-fi and the cell towers battling on your phone to see who will win? This is absurd of course.

Yet that is exactly what we are doing when we pit blockchains against each other. Many have nothing to do with each other. Nevertheless, we are conditioned to look for the "winner".

To go one step further, we are starting to see the development of chains that connect blockchains together.

This is called interoperability. Another word for that is integration. And still another word is collaboration.

And that is the mindset we need: Collaboration.

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Competition results in a few winners and everyone else losing. Now many will tell you that competition is healthy, that is drives people to excellence. This is programming. It is also the old mindset.

Olympic power lifters can put up some incredible weights. They compete against and push each other. This is how they become the best.

Yet these physical monsters of humanity are dwarfed in their results by a 120 pound woman who lifted up a car when her young son was trapped underneath.

Cryptocurrency and blockchain is a new world. It is a part of the new energy I have written about. This means adopting a new mindset about the way things are going to be. We will not be residing in scarcity.

Thus, there is no need to "compete". Instead, look to create.


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  ·  6 years ago (edited)

I disagree with you, but I see where you're coming from. While I believe there should (and will) still be competition, members of a DAC have their incentives restricted in a way where they're forced to refrain from damaging the ecosystem. Competition doesn't go away - the strategy changes to favor cooperation in some areas. That cooperation isn't always good for everyone else, as we see in duopolies, for example, but in the case of the massively distributed blockchain, it is most certainly a net positive for the world. The word, "Coopetition" comes to mind. I have no doubt that DAC's will compete with one another by providing different features and structures though.

Agreed, these views do not reflect reality but appeal to people's ideals. Chasing ideals is what gets us into trouble as a society. If somebody comes up with a better STEEM platform, it's going to be to compete with the others for eyeballs. Competition drives innovation.
If Steemit.com eventually dies, it's because they couldn't compete for user time with the other platforms. That being said, it's not a zero sum game, so there is no reason there can't be cooperation and competition at the same time as you implied. It reminds me of when the BTC Core dev found a BCH bug. He didn't have to let them know, but he did.

Blackberry and Nokia didn't consider Apple to be much of a competition... We know how this ended. Do you still use Altavista and Lycos as much as you use Google? Most likely during the past few years you haven't used them at all.

Some products and services can coexist, others not. Easy to tell about the past events, difficult to foresee the future.

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One will have to win out eventually, imo. Steem will have competitors coming.

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Absolutely @taskmaster4450 - this is what is supposed to distinguish humankind : the ability to enhance quality of life all round through mutual support many times more than is possible in the primitive scenario of 'survival of the fittest'.

Competition is important and provides motivation to build better products, cooperation is good under other circumstances.

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I think we will start to see this as some projects structure and others thrive. As they develop, the good ideas will survive and continue to create strong Dapps to the interest of communities. Some will align best with certain types but at the end each can be successful given their targets.

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I totally agree, this extends further than just blockchain, it is a message to humanity at large. We are moving in to an age of co-operation, collaboration and oneness. Competition in this age is no longer relevant just as the abacus is no longer relevant in the age of computers.

So what about people doing online business? We need to see our flaws as an online marketer.
https://www.urtasker.com/are-you-doing-great-as-an-online-marketer/