Most likely, the first time a primate used a rock or a stick was as a weapon used reflexively for defense. Then, that primate learned to use the rock or stick as a weapon offensively. Only later would they come around to using a tool.

To pick up a rock to hit something with it is not using a tool. To make that rock a tool, we have to look at it and think, “I bet I can do it by hitting it with that rock.” And then setting the rock aside so that we might use it again.

Competition is very important to development, but so far we have not used it as a tool. We use competition incidentally to entertain people, and we use competition as a weapon; to manipulate and control people.

Car racing is a competition that has made a huge impact on the cars we drive, but car racing as a developmental tool is still only incidental. The initial intent was not to use competition as a tool to improve our technology, but just a reflex of social structure; “I’m better than you.” Car racing would look very different today if we decided to use competition as a tool.

An example of using competition as a tool would be to make all basketball players wear ankle and knee braces. And doing it to not only protect the players, but to benefit the entire population.

Making all of the players wear braces, and not just the players who need them, would make the impact on the quality of play equal.

The overall benefit would be that all the attention going to ankle and knee braces of the basketball players would pressure companies to invest money to adapt and improve the braces until they did not impact the game at all. And, in the end, the general public would be the winners.

Learning to use competition as a tool could be the evolutionary step that catapults civilization forward. As it is we are stuck using competition as a weapon. In fact, it is a cornerstone of Western culture. Capitalism is not a economic theory, it is an excuse to use competition as a weapon.