The Law of Limited Competition

The law of limited competition is an evolutionary law that our culture has forgotten about. During the Great Forgetting, the time when our culture began to develop civilization and forgot his tribal past, a fiction was created about life in the wild.

Civilized man saw the wild as an evil, inhospitable place. It could not be a desirable place to live, it was to be feared because it was unstable, unordered, uncivilized, unstructured.

The Law of the Jungle is a myth.

It was thought that life in the wild was governed by "the law of the jungle" otherwise known as "kill or be killed."

It did not occur to the people of our culture, the takers, that there was actually a law that keeps order in the wild, that prevents it descending into chaos and upholds the integrity and diversity of the community. And if a species decides to disregard the law then they become extinct.

Humans came into being following the law of limited competition. Human evolution took place whilst following this law. Until the people of our culture came along and began to flout the law at every point.

Like It Or Not We Are Subject To The Law

Laws apply whether one is aware of them or not. It doesn't matter whether you are aware of the law of gravity or whether you believe in it; you are subject to its effects nonetheless.

People get quite uncomfortable when it is suggested that there is a biological law that applies universally to all creatures on the planet. Our culture holds humans in such high esteem that it can't fathom that such a law would apply to us. Sure it would apply to insects and birds and fish. But it wouldn't apply to us. We are different.

Unfortunately this is not true. Our culture's ego will take a blow when it finally comes to grips with the fact that the biological laws that apply to all of creation actually apply to us humans too. We are a creature of this Earth and we participate in the food chain. Thus the law of limited competition applies to us.

The Law of Limited Competition Defined

Daniel Quinn defines the Law of Limited Competition as such: you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities but you may not hunt down your competitors or destory their food or deny them access to food.

hyena
image by Appenz

Essentially what this means is that you cannot claim ownership of all the food. 

You can compete for the food that you need, but you cannot say "all the food is mine and no one else who wants any can have some."

You can fight for food but you cannot act in a genocidal fashion, setting out to kill those who compete with you merely because they compete with you.

A lion and a hyena may compete with each other to determine who gets to eat the dead antelope. However the lions may not rally together and set out to eliminate hyenas lest they challenge them for any of their kills. To do so would be to operate outside the boundaries of the law.

How The Law is Self Eliminating

If the lions did rally together and kill of all the hyenas then there would be more food for them. Their population would increase and their territory would expand. But there would still be other competitors for their food. So the lions set up a special task force to go out and eliminate other species that compete for food and living space.

Elimination doesn't occur instantly. It takes place when there is nowhere left to expand, no competitors left to destroy.

Maybe keep some in a zoo so they can be studied and looked at for fun but just get them out of our way so there is more room for us.

If a species destroys their competitiors then there is more food avaliable to them. With more food they can support a higher population. And with a higher population they need more living space so they expand their territory.

But as they expand their territory they meet more competitors who are eating food that could be theirs. So they destroy them, taking all the food in the new territory. With all this new food population expands again and so does territory.

And then it happens all over again. This way of life works for a short period of time. It doesn't eliminate the species instantly. Elimination only takes place when there is nowhere left to expand into, no competitors left to destroy. 

When this happens the way of life implodes. So many competitors have been destroyed that the biodiversity of the ecosystem has been fatally weakened. All that the landscape now supports is the lawbreaker and the lawbreaker's food. With biodiversity gone and the food chain destroyed the food supply of the lawbreakers will fall apart and when the food supply falls apart the lawbreaker is eliminated.


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