Rethinking Competition as a Non-Beneficial Mechanism in Economic Systems
arXiv:2506.11405 · doi:10.1007/s00191-026-00982-5
Abstract
Persistent economic competition is often justified as a mechanism of innovation, efficiency, and welfare maximization. Yet empirical evidence across disciplines reveals that competition systematically generates fragility, inequality, and ecological degradation, emergent outcomes not of isolated failures but of underlying systemic dynamics. This work reconceptualizes economic ecosystems as real complex adaptive systems, structurally isomorphic with biological and social ecosystems. Integrating complexity science, evolutionary biology, ecology, and economic and business theory, we classify economic interactions according to their systemic effects and propose a theoretical model of ecosystemic equilibrium based on the predominance of beneficial versus non-beneficial relationships. Recognizing economies as ecologically embedded and structurally interdependent systems provides a novel framework for analyzing systemic resilience, reframing competition as a non-beneficial mechanism.
References in corpus (6)
- The physics of higher-order interactions in complex systems
- Multidimensional Economic Complexity and Inclusive Green Growth
- Emergent stability in complex network dynamics
- Interactions and migration rescuing ecological diversity
- Evolutionary game selection creates cooperative environments
- Post-COVID Inflation & the Monetary Policy Dilemma: An Agent-Based Scenario Analysis