Day 11

I am rightfully concerned about our future in our country due to a lack of competition.  We allow for competition in sports and have rules that need to be followed to make things fair to everyone.  There are ref’s that oversee things to be the on field judges of the rules that everyone has agreed to.  Everyone agrees at least to some extent that competition with rules makes for ever stronger athletes that have to strive to break records and win.  I have seen in my lifetime a watering down of what it means to compete.  In sports there is an ultimate winner and with that comes a loser.  I know that it stinks to be the loser but it also instills in the loser a drive that makes them want to do better.  To get the chance to be the winner.  You see this natural drive in children of all mental capabilities.  If you have never watched the Special Olympics then you should some time because they come to the field with a sheer joy in the hope of being the winner.  We now seem to have a need to make sure that we reward all children that just show up for competition.  All getting a ribbon or trophy.  There is a soft part of me that say well ok give them that ribbon or trophy but it really has no meaning.  This lack of competition is making our children weak in many more ways then we realize.  The meaning comes with the winning.  When you remove the winning from sports there really is no reason to compete.  Even if the win is just with yourself.   To do that one more sit up or one more minute on the treadmill. If I am competing with myself it is to get a better time or make one more shot or to do something above what is the every day.  What reason can there be for me to work out if there is no reward? I also feel that the pass/fail method of giving grades is also another way we are removing competition from our children’s lives.  Why worry about getting an A when all you need to do is D level work to pass. Take this to the business world.  We now have companies that profit just for showing up because they are so big that no other company can compete with them.  So they have no reason to do better for consumers because just doing the minimum still makes them a huge profit. 
They remind me of Jaba the Hut from Star Wars all fat and in charge while those under him do all the work in a life of fear.  After the banking industry made our economy crash we should be taking a look at these huge companies and say is there really any competition here?  I for one say no.  There is no health competition any more.  If that were true we would have cars that got 120 mpg by now and we would have bankers that would be trying to give better interest rates and better services but I see the opposite going on.    The ref’s in this case have dropped the ball because what was done with our money was fraud and people should be jailed for what they did to all of us.  I throw the flag on them but my voice alone is not going to make a difference.  We all need to be shopping for better bankers and businesses that give better service and if they don’t we need to take our money and put it under a mattress until things change.