> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # “Competition Is for Losers,” They Said… - URL: https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/competition-is-for-losers-they-said/ - Published: 2026-11-10T05:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-10T05:29:59.000Z - Author: Tobias Mark Jensen - Tags: antitrust, tech billionaires, monopoly, google, competition Peter Thiel once famously argued that competition is for losers. His [Wall Street Journal op-ed from 2014](https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536?ref=futuristiclawyer.com) captures his thinking as well as the giddy mood of American tech giants during the Obama-era when they had become too big to fail, but not yet too big to govern. In other words, Big Tech was extremely successful, but people still liked it. Twelve years ago, it would probably have sounded fair to say that competition is for losers. Like saying “smart business is good business”. Why would a company compete when it can form a monopoly? That’s just bad business. But today, in the terrifying twilight of the late-stage Trump era, the saying has a very different connotation. It’s more akin to saying “greed is good, actually”. We can see how Thiel’s op-ed is outdated, because he asks whether or not Google is a monopolist and argues back and forth. We now [know conclusively](https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/the-bigtech-cartel-is-threatened/) that it is. We also know Google is such a powerful monopolist that antitrust laws do not apply to it like they would to normal businesses. American judges and politicians cannot hamper Google’s business growth at this point, because that would mean damaging the US economy, national interest, and giving the AI lead away to China. Or so the thinking goes. Let’s discuss the “competition is for losers” mantra by using sports as an analogy. Qualified opposition forces a team or an athlete to perform better, and in turn, makes matches more entertaining to watch for an audience. Competition thus makes sports better overall. The same principles hold true in the world of business. Healthy competition forces businesses to be on their A-game and deliver the best services or products they can to their customers. That is a good thing. Businesses are busy, hire more employees, customers have more and better choices, the economy roars. Monopolies form in the opposite scenario. Without competition there are no incentives to continually create better products and services. Customers have fewer and worse choices, fewer people are employed, the economy suffers, voters elect bad leaders, things get worse. Just not for the monopolists. Instead of competing, they manage to sustain their monopolies by *coopting disruption*. That often means acquiring smaller competitors or sidetracking regulation through lobbying work (e.g., Zuckerberg advocated for social media regulation to protect Facebook’s monopoly, ditto with Dario Amodei warning about how dangerous Anthropic’s software products can be unless regulators step in). [Coopting Disruption - How Five Companies Dominate the WebA new paper titled "Coopting Disruption" exposes the tricks and tactics used by BigTech to stay ahead of startups and potential competitors.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/icon/logoCut-d7ec755d-1d34-4841-ac36-5bcec219b9f6.jpg)Futuristic LawyerTobias Mark Jensen![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/thumbnail/https-3a-2f-2fsubstack-post-media-s3-amazonaws-com-2fpublic-2fimages-2f4bb31972-365e-43d9-af8e-06a02b0b1e21_950x534-jpeg-dd171007-0137-4ca9-a703-9c9536db6ffe.jpg)](https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/coopting-disruption-how-five-companies/) A competitionless market is a dictatorship. When a single large player is unbothered by competition, there is no genuine motivation to perform better. Regulators have limited power to regulate the monopoly, because without this large, single player, there wouldn’t be any market at all. At the end of the day, regulators are limited by market forces. But here is the downside of being a monopolist, and not a competitor. In professional sports, competition is stress-testing the abilities of a team or an athlete in real-time, thus providing valuable information about their strengths and weaknesses, and how they can improve. Businesses that don’t compete cannot collect this kind of valuable feedback, because they are never tested. A very capitalistic-minded person such as Peter Thiel could argue that it doesn’t matter how bad the monopolist performs, as long as they own the entire market, which is technically true. But by missing out on real world feedback, the monopolist loses touch with reality, may begin to nurture dangerous ideas, and often becomes blind to unforeseen threats that could rattle the ownership of its market. Here, we could talk more about AI, which is financed by a cartel of monopolists that have converged on the same idea and are passing money around in a circle. We could talk about the lack of regulation, due to the substantiated fears of accidentally destroying the future by wrongly punishing the visionaries. Or we could talk about China, which has already blindsided the monopolists seeking to further expand their monopolies, by delivering much cheaper and more resource-efficient models at the same quality. Finally, we could talk about intolerable outcomes of monopolies, such as tech billionaires, which will eventually turn people so angry and defiant that the monopolies can’t be sustained. But let’s return to Peter Thiel’s statement: Competition is for losers. If competition is what makes markets work, and markets are what make democracies work, it seems like everyone loses once competition is lost. Except for the monopolists. But without functioning markets or democracies what fun is it to have a monopoly in the first place? A self-sustaining business empire without customers. AI? ## Read more: [The Unholy Alliance on the Bubble to Burst Them AllAnthropic’s filing for its upcoming IPO - which will most likely happen in November after the midterms - was leaked to Reuters. The numbers are… interesting. Anthropic made $4.6 billion in 2025 with over a billion of that coming from just two customers: Google and Amazon. These two companies are![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/icon/logoCut-a0fcb2b0-a2e4-4c5d-9093-b20cdac35306.jpg)Futuristic LawyerTobias Mark Jensen![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/thumbnail/NEW-da218b17-d501-41b2-b7ba-1c3e7c6a28ad.jpg)](https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/the-unholy-alliance-on-the-bubble-to-burst-them-all/) [California Has a Rare Chance To Address the Tech Billionaire ProblemEditorial note: I noticed that my latest newsletter was only made available to paid members by mistake. Here is the free version. The polls indicate a sweeping blue wave at the midterm elections. In all likelihood, Trump and MAGA will dispute the results. There is also a realistic chance that![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/icon/logoCut-b4f7afe6-4073-4770-94f2-46bb183379b8.jpg)Futuristic LawyerTobias Mark Jensen![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/thumbnail/Billede1-169c74a3-85cb-4dc3-baf1-ff167f390820.png)](https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/california-has-a-rare-chance-to-address-the-tech-billionaire-problem/) [How States Are Responding to the AI Data Center Invasion“We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it. To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day. Simply put, we need to “Build, Baby, Build!” - From “America’s AI![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/icon/logoCut-f24a7125-6a84-44ca-922b-ff61a2fa4441.jpg)Futuristic LawyerTobias Mark Jensen![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/thumbnail/Billede1-f682bf3e-364f-4dbe-818c-f4e174792355.png)](https://www.futuristiclawyer.com/how-states-are-responding-to-the-ai-data-center-invasion/) ![Big Nerve](https://storage.ghost.io/c/b5/e0/b5e07497-6dd6-44e8-a973-56d2f53bce27/content/images/2026/08/bignerve_social_icon_square_500px-1.png) **Join in the discussions!** Introducing the new [Futuristic Lawyer forum](https://bignerve.com/futuristiclawyer/discussion-forums/channel/futuristic-lawyer?sort=most-recent&ref=futuristiclawyer.com) for discussing: The ethics and laws of tech, what the future may bring, how IT shapes human rights and vice versa, and any other topic! 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