PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

lumber, hire carpenters, or construct brick walls they need not
necessarily do them through the same agency, for that might mean
cumbersome over-centralization; but they would be able to use the same
measure for the same things, be conscious of the comparisons, and be
treated as competitors. And the more competition of this sort the
better.
For the value of competition is determined by the value of the
standards used to measure it. Instead, then, of asking ourselves
whether we believe in competition, we should ask ourselves whether we
believe in that for which the competitors compete. No one in his
senses expects to "abolish competition," for when the last vestige of
emulation had disappeared, social effort would consist in mechanical
obedience to a routine, tempered in a minority by native inspiration.
Yet no one expects to work out competition to its logical conclusion
in a murderous struggle of each against all. The problem is to select
the goals of competition and the rules of the game. Almost always the
most visible and obvious standard of measurement will determine the
rules of the game: such as money, power, popularity, applause, or Mr.
Veblen's "conspicuous waste." What other standards of measurement does
our civilization normally provide? How does it measure efficiency,
productivity, service, for which we are always clamoring?
By and large there are no measures, and there is, therefore, not so
much competition to achieve these ideals. For the difference between
the higher and the lower motives is not, as men often assert, a
difference between altruism and selfishness. [Footnote: _Cf._
Ch. XII] It is a difference between acting for easily understood aims,
and for aims that are obscure and vague. Exhort a man to make more
profit than his neighbor, and he knows at what to aim. Exhort him to
render more social service, and how is he to be certain what service
is social? What is the test, what is the measure? A subjective
feeling, somebody's opinion. Tell a man in time of peace that he ought
to serve his country and you have uttered a pious platitude, Tell him
in time of war, and the word service has a meaning; it is a number of
concrete acts, enlistment, or buying bonds, or saving food, or working
for a dollar a year, and each one of these services he sees definitely
as part of a concrete purpose to put at the front an army larger and
better armed, than the enemy's.
So the more you are able to analyze administration and work out
elements that can be compared, the more you invent quantitative
measures for the qualities you wish to promote, the more you can turn
competition to ideal ends. If you can contrive the right index numbers
[Footnote: I am not using the term index numbers in its purely
technical meaning, but to cover any device for the comparative
measurement of social phenomena.] you can set up a competition between
individual workers in a shop; between shops; between factories;