Competition is not a kind of warfare. To the extent that it pits men against one another it does so by stimulating them to excel. When each man is doing his best all may benefit: those who participate by producing and excelling, the rest of society by what is produced.

Planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition.

[C]ompetition [is] superior not only because it is in most circumstances the most efficient method known but even more because it is the only method by which our activities can be adjusted to each other without coercive or arbitrary intervention of authority.

The liberal argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are [as under dogmatic laissez faire].

It turns out, of course, that Mises was right.

Through competition we secure the most potent stimulant to improvement and progress. The manager’s restless pillow has done more to advance the practical arts than all the legislation upon the statute books. Competition curbs rapacity and attempts at economic domination.

The essence of the case for competition is the impossibility of predicting most of its consequences. The superiority of the competitive market is the positive stimuli it provides for constantly improving efficiency, innovating, and offering consumers diversity of choice.

The function of competition is to assign to every member of a social system that position in which he can best serve the whole of society and all of its members. It is a method of selecting the most able man for each performance.