The ethics of competition

This paper analyzes the ethics of market competition with reference to sport games. The metaphor of games suggests that different games represent three elements or models that are related to man and society: record, struggle, and cooperation. Record-type games pursue excellence or virtue; struggle-type games determine winners in zero-sum games; and the idea of cooperation or teamwork demands the just rules of competition based on solidarity. Moral criticism of market competition is sometimes in confusion with regard to the targets of criticism. Distinction should be made between the aims, rules, and motives of competition. A free society based on self-interest should be maintained by improving the aims and rules of competition, which are often defective and degraded. Thus the ethics of competition should consist of the ethics of virtue, of justice, and of freedom.