Competition is great for others-not for oneself and rarely for business!

Listening to regulators, lawyers, CEOs sing the praises of competition, and that it is the holy grail of business. But, what they really mean is that their raw material suppliers should sell cheap, they should benefit from subsidized state utilities, that the distributors should be barred from defecting, that intellectual property rights should preserve monopoly etc. In other words, competition is fine as long as protective mantle available of labour/IPR/pricing/export cartels etc that allow making super profits.

The source of this thinking is not hard to phantom. Right from bschool strategy classes onwards, aspiring leaders are taught the importance of keeping the competition out(brand, IPR, legal battles, competitive moats, entry barriers etc). Depending on the state of evolution of society/cultural mores, the State may circumscribe these methods by insisting on open access, infrastructure sharing, arms length dealings between vertically integrated units, term limits for IPR, competition laws etc. In response, the incubents push back via lobbying, using special interest groups etc and trying to take the moral high ground. And as often happens, the voice of a concentrated few losers is heard louder than the diffused voices of a mass of new/potential entrants, and that is why regulation globally rarely favours new entrants. While legitimate grounds like consumer safety, economic stability etc inform some of those regulations, it is often irrational why many regulations(India or abroad) and business practices(bank lending margins, leading conditions, credit ratings) directly disadvantage new entrants. Business lobbying can explain some of these reasons. However, the rare instance where business welcomes new competition is when a nascent business needs scale/building awareness which it cannot do itself. Hence, market expansion is a rational argument for incubents to proactively seek out new entrants, so that they can piggyback on the efforts of the latter. 

But lest we individuals bash Big Business for its oligopoly conspiracy against the laity, lets take a hard honest look at ourselves. As Adam Smith once said, all professions are a conspiracy against the laity' in the sense that at some point, they lose the sense of public purpose and seek to enrich themselves at the cost of public good. For example, the public service motto of law/medicine/accounting is increasingly difficult to identify, and many professions are more concerned with increasing the variety(and fees) of their credentials, and carving out exclusive niches/posts for their members, while couching those efforts under the moral high ground standpoint of improving governance/health etc.  Any labour union(including by definition professional association) routinely lobbies to keep others out(immigration checks, making pass rates harder, opposing titles of similar named organizations etc).

So while competition DOES make those exposed to it tougher, few genuinely wish for competition. While students/new graduates may aspire to selective/competitive schools/employers, that is also more from the aspect of personal gain/branding rather than the desire to be whipped by their peers! So the next time anyone signs the virtues of competition, take a hard look at the knowing-doing-saying gap.