The word compete has two meanings, to strive to win and to take part in a competition. In popular discourse it is interesting how the first definition dominates over the second. To be competitive means to be good enough to take part as much as it means to win at all cost.

When my Dad talked about the Olympics he talked of the ethos of “The joy is to compete, not just win”.

When we talk about “Open Competitive markets” what is the balance we have in mind between these two definitions, and is it right?

Edward de Bono had an interesting example of reductio ad absurdum. Democracy is a good thing; therefore more democracy must be better than less. Carry that on and you end up with a national referendum on what to have for breakfast. Try the same exercise substituting efficiency for democracy and you end up buying each piece of paper individually by competitive tender.

Now try this: “competition is good, therefore more competition must be better than less”.

We have lived in an era of 40 years with the dominance of free market thinking and with it competition.

Regulators are given a duty to promote competition.

Yet over 40 years there is an increasing body of evidence that competition, as currently understood, doesn’t always deliver.

Let’s look at some of the arguments.

Competition is supposed to lower costs, promote innovation, improve service, and improve value for money for the public purse. I can remember that in the early 80s I was told at a think tank meeting that monopolies were immoral and free markets kept the participants honest.

When the utilities were deregulated, the promise was made that in time the need for regulation would diminish as the market took hold. Energy prices would fall and attracting private sector investment would secure continuity of supply.

Competitive markets are the engine of growth and stability. That’s certainly challengeable since 2008.

I don’t want to go through here some of the benefits that have been realised, so this may seem like a bleak analysis, but bear with me.

I’m just about to get my first defined contribution pension. The annuity valuation indicates that I have to live 21 years to get the sum back at 0% interest. The fees eat up much of what I have saved. Indeed costs of the competitive UK pension market are up to 3 times some of our “less competitive” European counterparts. So much for cutting costs!

I spent 75 minutes yesterday on a call centre for a privatised utility trying to report a fault. I don’t believe in naming and shaming so I won’t. It was frankly appalling. In comparison my last contact with HMRC was a delight. Service, what service?

Government IT projects are often described as a disaster waiting to happen, often in my experience unfairly. Yet all of these are procured by open competitive tender. Value for money? Furthermore the contractual mind set in competitive tender has been known to squeeze out, not stimulate innovation, as it’s proven difficult to procure innovation.

As for honesty, can I just say PPI and Horsemeat?

The recent reports on LIBOR have described dysfunctional corporate cultures driven by individually hyper-competitive individuals.

Energy prices have risen and the private sector is demanding large public subsidies to invest in new energy infrastructure. We will be perilously close to the capacity of the national grid around 2015-16 and energy security cannot be guaranteed.

The standard response to all of these is to be blame procurement or regulation. Yet regulation was supposed to diminish over time. The promise was that it was temporary to allow for competition to grow against the privatised giants.

I find it interesting that Michael Gove, a Conservative Education Secretary last year wanted to establish a monopoly for exam boards on the grounds that competition had led to dumbing down and a race to the bottom.

Put like this a mark of gamma and “Could do better” looks generous. In a more balanced piece I would be comfortable with a beta, but not an alpha under any circumstances.

In contrast Europe’s strength in 2G mobile phones that spawned Vodafone was born out of international co-operation. WWW was invented at CERN in an international collaboration.

There is that horrid word “co-opetition”, competing through collaboration that is occasionally used for this phenomenon. This is the difference in Game theory between zero-sum games and win-win.

I’m not arguing to go back to some sunny uplands of the past which never existed. On the contrary, we only progress by tackling difficult and intractable problems.

If we are to secure the benefits of open markets for the long term, then I argue that we need a nuanced debate about the value of competition, not a blind acceptance of it.

I am reminded of a poster in a work place “Flogging will continue till morale improves”.

Is this a case of competition isn’t delivering, what we need is more competition?