Its ok to think this way - if you're not about the money. The guy who IS about the money will eat your lunch. Spread rumors about your quality. Suggest you're not a professional product. Snag your domain name right before you rename yourself. Cut you in a hundred ways.
Nice to think everybody will play nice, and in some imaginary world that might happen. But here, its important to keep looking out for number one.
I think a healthy balance is best. You can always assume a competitor will take advantage of opportunities to make you look bad, so there is no need to get caught off guard. But then you can actively reward or partner with ones that don't.
people doing this ruin the market for everyone else they are in. i believe this ultimately hurts them, too.
once people start figuring out that public image matters more than anything else, and that the public likes helpful people more than they like assholes, i think this will change.
once people start figuring out that public image matters more than anything else, and that the public likes helpful people more than they like assholes, i think this will change.
From Dick Cheney, to Maury Povich, to apparently every university business program, to popular sports, the entire Western cultural environment has been oriented around treating personal endeavors as zero-sum games. There is a thing called winning, only one person/group can win, and it better not be the other guy who gets it.
For generations, at least since the Gilded Age, cooperation and commmunitarianism has been subsumed under individual success. Where do you see people figuring out that things should (or even could) change from this entrenched state of affairs? Are you saying we need a cultural revolution? Because that wasn't very fun for the little guy the last few times it occurred.
Unfortunately, people don't have the time or the energy to investigate the minor behavioral details of every company they buy from. Thus, even if you are a tremendous asshole, it's not overly difficult to conceal this from the public while you go about your business of crushing competitors.
Nice to think everybody will play nice, and in some imaginary world that might happen. But here, its important to keep looking out for number one.