Written by Ralph Johnson   

David Brooks, in his April 23, 2012 New York Times column, titled "The Creative Monopoly," boils down America's capitalistic future into two alternatives: competitive and monopolistic. In it, he correctly argues that competition—for academic credentials, internships, and sought-after jobs, has a strong tendency to promote conformity and discourage creative risk-taking. The alternative, as exemplified by the case of PayPal founder Peter Thiel, is something Brooks calls monopoly, which is really a shorthand for the temporary exploitation, by individual entrepreneurs, of previously untapped or niche markets to which competition will only arrive later.

Brooks goes on to explain that when they compete, individuals confine their efforts to a predefined set of actions designed to achieve goals that are also predefined, and that what determines success isn't how creative or innovative the individual is, but merely how well she executes the predefined steps in competition with others pursuing the same pre-existing goals:

"...they move into a ranking system in which the most competitive college, program and employment opportunity is deemed to be the best. There is a status funnel pointing to the most competitive colleges and banks and companies, regardless of their appropriateness.
Then they move into businesses in which the main point is to beat the competition, in which the competitive juices take control and gradually obliterate other goals."

Peter Thiel has a problem with this approach, as related in Brooks's column:

"In fact, Thiel argues, we often shouldn’t seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too."

There's an uncomfortable inference here, amplified by the way Brooks concludes his column:

"Everybody worries about American competitiveness. That may be the wrong problem. The future of the country will probably be determined by how well Americans can succeed at being monopolists."

Nowhere in Brooks' column does he ever utter the dreaded “C” word, “community.” There is no mention made of anything good happening as a result of people working together. It's all about the best way for individuals to capitalize on their talents, and how to make the biggest profits in the shortest time--and this is lauded as the only method of “creating value” for the society at large. You either compete or monopolize—one or the other—but joining with other people, working together, collaboration, cooperation—none of these are even considered as an option worthy of discussion.

Our political discourse is already largely dominated by self-serving Tea Party individualists, who loudly denounce (as recently happened in Indiana) any politician, no matter how conservative, who dares to work together with fellow citizens to create forward progress. “Com”-promise, “com”-unity, “com”mon goals...you might as well just lump them all together and call them “Com”-munism. Anything involving compromise is suspect, any common project, any community goal, any community effort—if it's done by a group, and in pursuit of anything other than private profit, it's “un-American.”

And when, even if only by omission, Mr. Brooks denigrates the validity of group effort, his words have the effect of vindicating ultra-libertarian ardor for a society of self-sufficient hermits, so obsessed with “freedom and liberty” as to prefer isolation and avoidance to interaction and cooperation.

Isaac Asimov, in his novel “Foundation 7: Earth,” created a future in which Earth (rendered uninhabitable by a nuclear war, thousands of years in the future's “past”) is abandoned, the human race migrates to other worlds, and evolves along several disparate paths. One of these paths leads to a planet called Solaria, inhabited entirely by human-descended hermaphrodites who live alone, reproduce unassisted, and control their individual domains absolutely. One such being explains, to a group of explorers who land there:

"...you do not know what freedom is. You have never lived but in swarms, and you know no way of life but to be constantly forced, in even the smallest things, to bend your wills to those of others or, which is equally vile, to spend your days struggling to force others to bend their wills to yours. Where is any possible freedom there? Freedom is nothing if it is not to live as you wish! Exactly as you wish!"

The fictional Solaria has a population of 1200. When one of the explorers exclaims, “Only twelve hundred on your entire world?” The Solarian replies:

"Fully twelve hundred. You count in numbers again, while we count in quality. -Nor do you understand freedom. If one other Solarian exists to dispute my absolute mastery over any part of my land, over any robot or living thing or object, my freedom is limited. Since other Solarians exist, the limitation on freedom must be removed as far as possible by separating them all to the point where contact is virtually nonexistent. Solaria will hold twelve hundred Solarians under conditions approaching the ideal. Add more, and liberty will be palpably limited so that the result will be unendurable."

Mr. Brooks certainly isn't suggesting an evolution this radical, but by ignoring and thus discounting, as he does, the validity of community, he serves to amplify the Tea Party's “I've got mine, go screw yourself” mind-set. As Mr Asimov illustrates, the Tea Party's ardently libertarian ethos would eventually, if carried out to its extreme, lead toward isolation, a paranoid revulsion toward anything or anyone “other,” and a Darwinist sensibility which, by weeding out all but the 100% self-sufficient, would eventually lead to “Tea Party Utopia”--a sparsely populated land in where inhabitants would be fewer, much further between, protected by some form of impenetrable defense system, and unencumbered by any messy, inconvenient social obligations.

Absent the option of relocation to an empty planet like Solaria, we (the Tea Party included) are pretty much stuck with each other. And if we're going to continue to value human life as an inalienable right, there are some problems that simply can't be resolved by “Hunger Games” competition, or “Pet Rock” monopolism. They require a community, whether like-minded or not, and everybody within that community must compromise.