| Deer antlers and understanding a competitive society According to the theory of natural selection, traits that offer a relative advantage are inherited. It is not enough that a genetic variation helps in gaining an advantage. It must be more helpful than competing variations. In the case of individuals, traits that help in competition with other members of the same species evolve, and such traits often harm the species as a whole. The antlers of the moose are a prime example. (p. 52) |
| From Robert H. Frank, trans. Ahn Semin, "The End of Competition — The Future Economic Order After the Winner-Take-All Society" (Woongjin Knowledge House) |
Male moose. The ones with big antlers can have antlers 1.2 meters long and weighing 18 kilograms. Why did these deer grow such enormous antlers? These antlers, it turns out, are not weapons against predators. They are weapons used in the competition to win mates. Males with larger antlers have a higher chance of winning against rivals, and such mutations spread. The big-antler genes of the winners are passed on to the next generation. The problem is that this brings bad outcomes for the species as a whole. The big antlers that helped a male beat his rivals reduce his mobility in dense forest and make him more likely to be caught by wolves. Small antlers are of course better for escaping wolves, but because small-antlered males lose in the competition with other males, their "small-antler" genes are unlikely to reach the next generation. In the end, this "antler competition" among males helped the individual males who won and spread their genes, but inflicted great damage on the species as a whole. Of course, there are also many cases where competition among individual animals produces results that benefit the whole species. Take the gazelle, which must run fast to avoid becoming cheetah prey in environments with nowhere to hide. For them, "running faster" benefits both the individual and the species. As the author argues, "competition" sometimes benefits only the part rather than the whole. This can happen not just in the animal world but also in our own society and economy. That is why we need the wisdom to keep the advantages of "competition" in our social and economic systems while simultaneously preventing these side effects.  |
