Net Outcome

The realization that the market and the system that gave humanity its incredible technological progress is often called the perfect system.

But what is competition, and why did it really produce such progress?

Is competition itself the engine of the market and humanity, or is it a false theory that the powerful instilled in us so we would work daily on incremental product improvements to maximize revenue by beating a competitor?

Competition is a temporary effect that stimulates a company's development. And development in the context of competition is the maximization of profit and shareholder returns.

Over the past two decades, the market has become an arena of excessive choice that delivers no real value. Companies focus on minor feature differences instead of joining forces to solve fundamental problems. The result — hundreds of thousands of specialists spend years building technologies that merely duplicate each other.

These things are not only useless for humanity as such, but also a way of corrupting the consumer. The number of companies and the sheer volume of choice has completely corrupted and spoiled the consumer — to the point where instead of doing something useful, we spend hours choosing the same product.

Defenders of competition and the free market often argue that progress under a free market has been remarkably large. But this is not competition's achievement — it's the absence of a transparent goal-setting system. And the key argument I've already made above: people spend years developing product features that already exist, or do so in parallel with other companies. It's unthinkable — hundreds of thousands of people spend their potential, time, and intellectual resources doing the same thing.

This problem manifests not only at the company level, but at the state level. Instead of collaborating to address global challenges — from climate change to fighting poverty — countries compete for resources, industry, and political influence. Enormous resources are directed toward building weapons and defending national interests, which doesn't lead to the common good but only deepens division.

And what we arrive at in the end: competition is not what drives the market — it's what slows it down.

Collaboration is often perceived as the opposite of competition, but this is a false dichotomy. Collaboration is not a rejection of market mechanisms — it's their reimagining. It allows us to unite efforts, minimize duplication, and direct resources toward solving important problems.

Take the company examples above — they compete instead of building something valuable together and growing faster.

The system of competition doesn't want to make people more successful. When everyone is so obsessed with customer-centricity, they're really obsessed with the opportunity to make more money. Customer-centricity isn't the goal — it's a means to the true goal: enriching the powerful and corrupting the weak.

And collectivism, communism — the experience we've all learned from — is not something to orient toward. Because it's an extreme. People cannot be equal in terms of status. Some have ambitions, some don't. Status is a measure of ambition and the willingness to work relentlessly. That is where the line of distinction should be drawn.

The main barrier to collaboration is our perception of value. People tend to evaluate decisions through the lens of short-term consequences, without considering long-term benefits. This applies to both individual choices and societal systems.

When it comes to change, society is conditioned to ask itself: "At what cost?" — and this operates at both the micro and macro level.

You don't like living in your current country? What if you put in the effort and moved? Or started participating in the country's political life and tried to change what you don't like?

Sounds hard. I understand. That's how people usually think. Inertia is a perfectly normal defense mechanism of the brain — to evaluate effort against outcome. And usually, the brain concludes that the cost exceeds the value. And that's where it ends.

But the problem with this way of thinking is that we compare short-term value against short-term effort. The effort will obviously feel greater.

If you want to move somewhere, it's a long process that can take years in your current country — preparing documents, parting with your property, and so on. And then in the other country — documents, an apartment, a new way of life.

Of course it's hard. But what if we compare the short-term effort against the long-term value? One way or another, when you want to move, you base your desire on something about the country or city you want to move to. And usually the desire itself is rooted in long-term value. But our brain prefers to weigh cost and value based on what needs to happen in the near term.

This model of perception is so deeply embedded in our consciousness that people have stopped thinking about long-term value. There's this strange paradigm — here and now.

It doesn't matter how much value an endeavor holds in the long term — if in the short term it slightly disrupts something, current society will prefer to reject it.

Strange, isn't it?

And I want to be perfectly clear: long-term means a relative span of time. For our examples, let's take 50 years. And short-term — everything less than that.

Consider the modern political system. It operates entirely on short-term results instead of building long-term strategies. Leaders elected for four years focus on immediate measures — like cutting taxes or fighting inflation — to meet voter expectations and secure re-election, rather than creating sustainable systems. This produces band-aids instead of real change.

This system only worsens the perception problem — society evaluates politicians by their short-term achievements without considering long-term value.

And it's important to clarify: this isn't a problem of the political system — it's a problem of society as a whole. Politicians make promises based on society's expectations.

Let's consider another example. Imagine a person who wants to bring peace to Earth: eliminate the possibility of war, unite people, remove excessive competition, and make people collaborate more than they compete. Their goal is to create a culture of human development on Earth. To make Earth, as humanity's home, flourish and grow. Not a single country, not a single city or continent — but Us, as representatives of the human race.

Sounds ambitious, almost impossible. How could we convince the political leaders of every country to unite under one wing, choose a single leader, and cast aside the pride and vanity that every leader of every nation receives after inauguration?

Obviously, there will be wars. Some countries will agree to join the unification, some will resist. There will be wars, there will be casualties, there will be deaths.

And suppose tomorrow such a person appears — with that great goal, that ambition and desire to unite people, end wars, and carry us into an era of development and prosperity. How do you think they would be judged by today's society?

Initially, they'd be called a very smart and ambitious leader. But mention the path or the sacrifices required to achieve this goal — and the positivity instantly turns to negativity.

Why?

It's the same thing we discussed above. The inability to understand the idea, to see the long-term value in comparison with the sacrifices and effort required along the way.

In economics, there are the concepts of gross product and net product. Net product is income after deducting equipment depreciation, while gross product is the total output without accounting for wear.

Now imagine if entrepreneurs always focused not on the result a product could bring, but on the deductions from that product. A company can generate $1 million in gross revenue, pay $200,000 in depreciation, and be left with $800,000 in net income. A wonderful business, isn't it?

But now let's say that $200,000 needs to be invested upfront, and the return comes in a year — but it's guaranteed. Most people won't do anything. Because again, we return to the problem of the long-term idea versus short-term effort.

For society to flourish, develop, and grow, we need to solve the problem of evaluating outcomes solely by short-term effort. We need to evaluate by net outcome, where net outcome equals gross outcome minus sacrifices and effort. If the net outcome is large enough, then regardless of ethics, moral values, and social conventions — the process must begin.

Disregarding short-term consequences in the form of breaking rules, social boundaries, and moral norms is a normal process of growth and development. Far from destroying society, it will make it better. Because the evaluation is always based on the net outcome — and the new society is part of that net outcome.

Morality is not a static category; it evolves alongside society, reflecting its values and aspirations. If humanity strives for progress, morality must develop in the same direction — prioritizing long-term perspectives over outdated norms shaped by the conditions of the past.

A conscious transformation of morality requires a focus on strategic goals and a rethinking of conventions — based on what kind of society we want to become, rather than limiting ourselves to the framework of current reality.