Eliot Spitzer quote: “One of the biggest lies in capitalism is that companies like competition. They don't. Nobody likes competition.”

“Competition-ruthless, unforgiving, to-the-death competition-is a crucial feature of capitalism.”

Jim Stanford (1961) Canadian economist

Part 3, Chapter 11, Competition, p. 129
Economics For Everyone (2008)

“If Apple has a flaw, it's the inability of the company to crush competition using the kind of aggressive tactics that companies like Microsoft and Intel have always applied.”

John C. Dvorak (1952) US journalist and radio broadcaster

"Apple's Swan Song" in PC Magazine (14 January 2013) http://pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2414266,00.asp
2010s

“Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism; it’s exploitation.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, July 2021, Remarks by President Biden At Signing of An Executive Order Promoting Competition in the American Economy

“I like business because it is competitive.”

William Feather (1889–1981) Publisher, Author

"Why I Like Business" in Manitowoc Herald-Times (21 July 1927), p. 3 http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/8420770/
Context: I like business because it is competitive. Business keeps books. The books are the score cards. Profit is the measure of accomplishment, not the ideal measure, but the most practical that can be devised.
I like business because it compels earnestness. Amateurs and dilettantes are shoved out. Once in you must fight for survival or be carried to the sidelines.
I like business because it requires courage. Cowards do not get to first base.
I like business because It demands faith. Faith in human nature, faith in one's self, faith in one's customers, faith in one's employees.
I like business because it is the essence of life. Dreams are good, poetical fancies are good, but bread must be baked today, trains must move today, bills must be collected today, payrolls met today. Business feeds, clothes and houses man.
I like business because it rewards deeds and not words.
I like business because it does not neglect today's task while it is thinking about tomorrow.
I like business because it undertakes to please, not to reform.
I like business because it is orderly.
I like business because it is bold in enterprise.
I like business because it is honestly selfish, thereby avoiding the hypocrisy and sentimentality of the unselfish attitude.
I like business because it is promptly penalized for its mistakes, shiftlessness and inefficiency.
I like business because its philosophy works.
I like business because each day is a fresh, adventure.

“The first dimension is called "competition," and it refers to that aspect of an economic system in which exchanges of one sort or another play the most important part. In capitalism, of course, competition and exchange occur primarily in markets.”

Samuel Bowles (1939) American economist

Source: Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, 2005, p. 54

“Well, I don't have much competition here."
"You don't have much competition anywhere.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

David P. Norton (1941) American business theorist, business executive and management consultant

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

“Companies are in the midst of a revolutionary transformation. Industrial age competition is shifting to information age competition. During the industrial age, from 1850 to about 1975, companies succeeded by how well they could capture the benefits from economies of scale and scope. Technology mattered, but, ultimately, success accrued to companies that could embed the new technology into physical assets that offered efficient, mass production of standard products.
During the industrial age, financial control systems were developed in companies, such as General Motors, DuPont, Matsushita, and General Electric, to facilitate and monitor efficient allocations of financial and physical capital. A summary financial measure such as return-on-capital employed (ROCE) could both direct a company’s internal capital to its most productive use and monitor the efficiency by which operating divisions used financial and physical capital to create value for shareholders.
The emergence of the information era, however, in the last decades of the twentieth century, made obsolete many of the fundamental assumptions of industrial age competition. No longer could companies gain sustainable competitive advantage by merely deploying new technology into physical assets rapidly, and by excellent management of financial assets and liabilities.”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 2-3

“The essential complement to the path-breaking book Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter’s Competitive Advantage explores the underpinnings of competitive advantage in the individual firm.   Competitive Advantage introduces a whole new way of understanding what a firm does. Porter’s groundbreaking concept of the value chain disaggregates a company into “activities,” or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Competitive Advantage, 1985

“I don't like playing politics, I don't like having bosses and being told what to do, I don't like competition, I have no desire to manage other people, so I've instinctively avoided or quickly left any places that were even remotely maze-like.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In a discussion thread https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/a8wjKNSGCPSzdWMMa/how-to-escape-from-immoral-mazes#tggw3zpPyuGgrAttt on LessWrong, January 2020

“One of the biggest lies in capitalism is that companies like competition. They don't. Nobody likes competition.”

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