I would argue the social-democracies of Europe are exactly what that is. The idea the free market can address so many things better than any other economic model, but maybe ruthless profits shouldn't drive health care.

The point I'm making here was well understood in the post-WWII era. Here's the cartoon version: "Meet King Joe".[1] The more serious version, "Despotism".[2] The hard sell version, "How to lose what we have."[3] All of these were produced for industrial companies.

It's worth understanding how this was viewed by the generation that won WWII.

[1] https://archive.org/details/MeetKing1949

[2] https://archive.org/details/Despotis1946

[3] https://archive.org/details/InOurHan1950_3

capitalists have rivals, but capitalism does not

Nope. Private capital allocation decisions are the foundation. It is a mistake to mix this with wishful thinking, the same flavor of mistake as claiming "socialism is about making economic decisions that reflect the will of the people rather than the will of the rich," it assumes success at the aspirational principle when that assumption is something you must avoid at all costs if you want to understand success/failure at achieving the aspirational principle. Instead, a discussion about the foundation of a system should be very carefully confined to what the system actually does: capitalism is about private capital allocation decisions, socialism is about public capital allocation decisions, and in practice everything is mixed.

Anticompetitive incentives and behavior are a natural emergent property on top of the private ownership foundation: network effects, platform effects, last mile dynamics, dumping, hell even economies of scale are intrinsically anticompetitive at the same time as they are intrinsically beneficial. Regulation to restore competition amid these natural anticompetitive tendencies can keep them in check and most people would agree this is generally a good idea -- but most people don't make the capital allocation decisions and most people don't learn about the world except through media controlled by people who do, so not only are the regulations 3 stories above the foundational principle, they are doubly insulated from effectively checking the dark forest on the second story by the very nature of the foundation itself.

You have probably heard about how misalignment emerges in socialism, because that is a story the jedi would tell you: capital allocation decisions made without skin-in-the-game accountability tend to cause malinvestment because as far as elected representatives are concerned the job is the product. Of course, a socialist government is aware of this tendency and tries to control it, just like a capitalist government is aware of anticompetitive tendencies in its own economy and tries to control them. The degree of success varies.

When there is nothing to compare against, propaganda can hide almost any mismanagement, so I am glad that we seem to be entering a second period of genuine competition. I'm less glad that this brings with it a second period of genuine "hopefully we don't kill each other / ourselves," but so it goes.

If you think that's interesting, did you ever consider that baseball is the only sport where the defense has the ball?

Goalies in hockey, and whoever the best player is on the team in basketball. ;-)

I don’t disagree with your general point, but Messi and Ronaldo absolutely have played directly against each other a decent number of times — a quick google suggests 30 head-to-heads in the “clasico”, supposed to be one of football’s biggest rivalries.

Nah, soccer is real boring, would take American Football anyday.

> there are people on both teams who really are tackling those guys.

This is the critical distinction.

Peyton isn't deciding the defense when Brady is on offense. Brady isn't reacting to whatever Peyton left on the pool table or the dart board.

> there are people on both teams who really are tackling those guys.

This is the critical distinction.

Why is the commentator talking about Brady vs Peyton, when actually Peyton is doing nothing to stop Brady getting touchdowns?

Why don't they focus on whoever is making the decisions on the defensive side? That would seem to matter more as a struggle between combatants. It's not like each defense is some nameless, generic unit that simply reveals who is the better QB.

There might be some depth to the attack vs defense strategy that is worth highlighting, above the QB v QB.

This doesn't preclude that though. Maybe it's because I'm a weightlifter and while we compete with one another we really don't, but my own numbers can be my rival. In fact, they're a much more effective rival than anyone else at the gym because they can never be permanently beaten, they can never retire, they will always demand more. If I wake up tomorrow and through some miracle I'm the best weightlifter on earth and can bench a 1000 pounds, 1005 pounds exists whether someone else can lift that much or not. If you're Tom Brady you don't need Peyton Manning in order to throw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions, you need to throw more touchdowns and fewer interceptions. If your rival has a career-ending injury does that define your pinnacle? Not if you're actually in competition with yourself it doesn't.

the greatest i know of are interesting characters because they can invent rivals and adversity where none exists. this comes across oddly and makes for great stories about their mania for competition

That's not where Peyton Manning is competing!

Did you read Tom’s post all the way through?