I often find myself arguing against competition, seemingly in general. This is strange, because I'm very interested in games and game design, and games are competition.
Friendly competition is brilliant.
What many people call competition, the more exclusive kind that I call discompetition, maybe doesn't motivate me as much as it motivates its proponents. If someone seems very motivated to win, openly salivating at the thought of beating me, I find that intimidating and figure I won't have the focus to overturn theirs. The social intimidation side of competition seems to drain my enthusiasm. I suppose that's the point at which friendly competition becomes unfriendly for me.
In my world, the best competition is implicit. Someone is not competing to put me out of the game, but in respect for my skill or potential to gain it. Someone competes with me because we both see deep value in much the same thing. What this person learns, I occasionally steal, and vice versa: we are flattered that the other steals from us. The work is difficult and we don't always like each other, yet there is no cap on applicants to wisdom. We enjoy discovery and compete to beautify the forms by which people can apply.
Notice that neither of us is being driven out of existence. In fact, we wouldn't like that. It would be sad to lose a fellow player, learner, worker.
When I argue against competition, I argue against not eucompetition but discompetition, against not eustress but distress. I argue against industrial-military arms races and all economic practices that allow those in comfort to reduce the comfort of those not in comfort. I argue against the backhanded supposition that each of us is in a struggle for existence against the others: I call it backhanded because it is an insult that creates the situation it describes.
There is a wonderful cartoon of the former corporate structure of Microsoft, with guns pointing in defense against imaginary guns. Competition of this kind creates trenches along every visible boundary (patently ignoring the slipperiness of optical illusions): racism, nationalism, sexism, religionism, generationism, classism. We are forced to unite in these superficial groups to defend against the guns they imagine we are pointing at them.
