Competition is not the result of a natural interplay of appetites, instincts, behavior … the effects of competition are due only to the essence that characterizes and constitutes it … not to a pre-existing nature [but] to a formal privilege. Competition has an internal logic; it has its own structure. Its effects are only produced if this logic is respected. It is, as it were, a formal game between inequalities; it is not a natural game between individuals and behaviors.

Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, loc. 110