The Fear of Competition

Abstract

In the last chapter we found the basic cause of today’s fear of a world economy to be that the days of a genuine world economy are long past, and that its chaotic condition has become a matter of habit. Fewer and fewer people can still conceive that something like a real world economy was once possible, and even fewer that anything like it could become possible once more. They shrink back from it as from an adventurous journey to a completely unknown country, and only the smallest number will take the trouble to study the detailed descriptions of this country as provided by economics. But their willingness to succumb to all sorts of special forms of fear of a world economy is all the greater, and this is what we now have to consider. We will begin with the type which we will call the general fear of competition.