FYI: Robin Hanson has two recent posts (first, second) on a very similar topic.

So an incorruptible person is one that has all of their needs met, but doesn't depend on anything for it. They can always make the moral choice, because no choices are incompatible with the foundation of their well-being.

This actually goes to the very heart of Buddhism (and probably a few other religions). Well done. ;)

You have a restaurant. It pays you a reasonable income, and there is no real competition, so you have no reason to put any effort into improving it. A new restaurant opens down the street. Now you need to take your business more seriously. You improve the menus, the decor, the advertising. The other restaurant is doing that too. More custom comes to the neighbourhood, because now there are two good restaurants where there was only one indifferent one before.

There are a lot of stories one can make up.

I have some disagreements with the framing here, but generally appreciate this as a discussion prompt – figuring out when competition is good is quite important.

I have some cached thoughts on this that I originally posted over on the EA forum [EA(p) · GW(p)]. Crossposting here for now:

Competition in the EA Sphere

A few years ago, EA was small, and it was hard to get funding to run even one organization. Spinning up a second one with the same focus area might have risked killing the first one.

By now, I think we have the capacity (both financial, coordinational and human-talent) that that's less of a risk. Meanwhile, I think there are a number of benefits to having more, better, friendly competition.

A few reasons for I think competition is good:

• Diversity of worldviews is better. Two research orgs might develop different schools of thought that lead to different insights. This can lead to more ideas as well as avoiding the tail risks of bias and groupthink.
• Easier criticism. When there's only one org doing A Thing, criticizing that org feels sort of like criticizing That Thing. And there may be a worry that if the org lost funding due to your criticism, That Thing wouldn't get done at all. Multiple orgs can allow people to think more freely about the situation.
• Competition forces people to shape up a bit. If you're the only org in town doing a thing, there's just less pressure to do a good job.
• "Healthy" Competition enables certain kinds of integrity. Sort of related to the previous two points. Say you think Cause X is real important, but there's only one org working on it. If you think Org A isn't being as high integrity as you'd like, your options are limited (criticize them, publicly or privately, or start your own org, which is very hard. If you think Org A is overall net positive you might risk damaging Cause X by criticizing it. But if there are multiple Orgs A and B working on Cause X, there are less downsides of criticizing it. (Alternate framing is that maybe criticism wouldn't actually damage cause X but it may still feel that way to a lot of people, so getting a second Org B can be beneficial). Multiple orgs working on a topic makes it easier to reward good behavior.
• In particular, if you notice that you're running the only org in town, and you want to improve you own integrity [LW(p) · GW(p)], you might want to cause there to be more competition. This way, you can help set up a system that creates better incentives for yourself, that remain strong even if you gain power (which may be corrupting in various ways)

There are some special caveats here:

• Some types of jobs benefit from concentration.
• Communication platforms sort of want to be monopolies so people don't have to check a million different sites and facebook groups.
• Research orgs benefit from having a number of smart people bouncing ideas around.
• This means...
• See if you can refactor a goal into something that doesn't actually require a monopoly.
• If it's particularly necessary for a given org to be a monopoly, it should be held to a higher standard – both in terms of operational competence and in terms of integrity.
• If you want to challenge a monopoly with a new org, there's likewise a particular burden to do a good job.
• I think "doing a good job" requires a lot of things, but some important things (that should be red flags to at least think about more carefully if they're lacking) include:
• Having strong leadership with a clear vision
• Make sure you have a deep understanding of what you're trying to do, and a clear model of how it's going to help
• Not trying to do a million things at once. I think a major issue facing some orgs is lack of focus.
• Probably don't have this be your first major project. Your first major project should be something it's okay to fail at. Coordination projects are especially costly to fail at because they make the job harder for the next person.
• Invest a lot in communication on your team.

You have a restaurant. It's a local monopoly, and you're running decent profits. A new restaurant opens down the street. Some of your customers are diverted, so you lower your prices. You can no longer buy that sweet Ferrari.

You have a restaurant. It's a local monopoly, and you're running decent profits. A new restaurant opens down the street. Some of your customers are diverted, so you lower your prices. You have to cancel most of your donations to AMF.

In the first example, we can be reasonably sure that competition increased value. In the second example, we can be reasonable sure that competition decreased value.

Just flagging that I know people who would disagree strongly with this framing, fwiw.

Two observations.

I think you use "value" in a confusing manner. If value is the nominal price then value increases or decreases only if total income increases or decreases. If value is used in the sense I think you generally mean, then that is a largely (overwhelmingly largely IMO) subjective judgement and it's not clear if buying the car or making the donation a superior outcome.

Additionally, I think the conclusion, seems to needs something said about what the new restaurant owner and workers are doing. If we're in a zero-sum game then it really should be a wash. If, as generally accepted, markets tend to be positive sum games then we have a case of a smaller share of a larger pie (that is some of the employees will now eat at the first restaurant where as they could not before as they were unemployed, or making less money).

The other observation is about network effects. It used to be that businesses, particularly restaurants type businesses I think, used think they needed to be away from other restaurants. It was a form of spacial competition for demand. But that view has fallen to reality. We we that proximity to other competitors is not that bad and can actually increase total demand for all on the supply side. That seems to be driven by network type effects. Think about the dinning/club districts in cities, shopping mall and their food courts.

Of course there are limits but the simple model of competition don't really seem to capture the real dynamics of market competition.