Rethinking Competition as a Non-Beneficial Mechanism in Economic Systems

TL;DR

This paper challenges the traditional view of economic competition by framing economies as complex adaptive systems, revealing that competition often leads to systemic fragility and inequality rather than innovation and efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework that models economies as ecological systems, emphasizing the systemic effects of interactions and rethinking competition as potentially non-beneficial.

Findings

Economic competition can cause systemic fragility and inequality.

Economies function as complex adaptive systems similar to biological ecosystems.

A new model of ecosystemic equilibrium highlights the non-beneficial aspects of competition.

Abstract

Persistent economic competition is often justified as a mechanism of innovation, efficiency, and welfare maximization. Yet empirical evidence across disciplines reveals that competition systematically generates fragility, inequality, and ecological degradation, emergent outcomes not of isolated failures but of underlying systemic dynamics. This work reconceptualizes economic ecosystems as real complex adaptive systems, structurally isomorphic with biological and social ecosystems. Integrating complexity science, evolutionary biology, ecology, and economic and business theory, we classify economic interactions according to their systemic effects and propose a theoretical model of ecosystemic equilibrium based on the predominance of beneficial versus non-beneficial relationships. Recognizing economies as ecologically embedded and structurally interdependent systems provides a novel framework for analyzing systemic resilience, reframing competition as a non-beneficial mechanism.