Letter: Fair and harmless competition

Fri, 07/11/2008 10:12 AM  |  Reader's Forum

A free and open community in which all doors and windows can be left unlocked can only remain safe when all residents can be trusted absolutely to act with propriety and benevolence.

Competition and exchange of ideas only leads to the realization of the highest ideals, where competition is not only open but fair and sincere. Countries, cultures, communities and individuals have a right to have their unique ideological and cultural riches acknowledged and protected.

For competition in commerce to lead to the greatest possible good, we need to observe regulations, rules and conventions that ensure the bases for the competition are fair and true. Competition that results in or involves fraud, exploitation or other harm is something that civilized countries discourage and legislate against.

To what point should we support or participate, even if indirectly, in market speculation, where that speculation means people starve or lose any prospect of being able to afford shelter for themselves or their families?

Any commercial entity, monopoly interest or cartel that is allowed to gain control of a sector of an economy to the extent that it can hold a government to ransom, that can be allowed to dictate to governing parties how they will legislate and conduct business, that has a controlling influence on commercial media dependent on advertising revenue is potentially very unhealthy for freedom and democracy.

Sovereign nations are failing wherever they allow participatory democracy to be subverted, wherever they allow the pathways to enlightenment, pathways that mean people seek to live in grace, charity and fraternity rather than in predatory opportunism and self-interested ignorance, to be compromised. True communities are only held together, are only able to remain free from hunger and hopelessness, where people love their neighbors as themselves.

The future of humankind is not served well by the kind of ethical relativism within commerce that has seen us lose track of what is truly worthy or unworthy, admirable or contemptible, in business transactions.

With seemingly epochal changes now before us, some due to the great opportunities provided through technological development, others due to the misuse and mistaken use of that same technology over generations, we need to realize the full potential in humanity for goodness and benevolence, if we are to progress and prosper.

BRUCE TERRY
Tasmania, Australia

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