The anthropologist Ashley Montagu argued against Darwin (persuasively in my view) that cooperation rather than competition is inherently necessary for survival of a species. Even if it could be proved absolutely that Montagu was wrong and Darwin was right, the social Darwinism that informs much of free-market capitalist thought is based more on analogy (competition ensures survival of the species = competition ensures survival of an economic system) than on empirical observation of correspondences between biological and economic imperatives. But that skew has led theorists to focus on the alleged value of competition rather than on any of its shortcomings. If the only tool you have is a hammer….