Competition

 Reading "Zero to One"

Old monopolies no not strangle innovation. 
1950's and 60's IBM hardware monopoly over taken by Microsoft's software

Creative monopoly means innovation.  Dives progress.  Profits finance research.

Competition means no profits for anyone. 
High competition does not give time, money or head space to do the innovation that they so desperately need.

Competition is an ideology that pervades our society.  It's preached and taught from the day we are born.

Education drives and reflects our obsession with competition.

Grades allow precise measurement of each students competitiveness.

Pupils with the highest marks receive status and credentials.

We teach all students the same stuff in the same ways irrespective of individual talents or preferences.

Students who don't learn best by sitting still at a desk are made to feel inferior

Students who excel on conventional measures like tests and assignments end up defining their identities in terms of this weirdly contrived academic parallel reality.

Elite students climb confidently until they reach a level of competition sufficiently intense to beat their dreams out of them.

Higher education is the place where people who had big plans in high school get stuck in fierce rivalries with equally smart peers over conventional careers like management consultancy and investment banking.  For the privilege of being turned into conformists students and their families pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition.