Competitive mindset is just right for capitalism. There can't be one without the other, profit and competition... two wings of the same bird. Without profit there would be nothing to compete for, and without competitiveness profit would be meaningless. They are both required for free market to exist. They are also not necessarily evil (religious connotation makes sense, I've heard people comparing FM to "secular theology" http://mg.co.za/article/2016-12-22-00-the-age-of-humanism-is-ending/) by themselves, but they can be demoralizing and they can be used by bad people to do exceedingly bad things. As with religions, it all depends on the follower - good people tend to get positive information from their holy books, bad people read passages about burning infidels. Good people create positive businesses, bad people run abattoirs, etc.
However, it is obvious that when "profit" is defined by artificial measurement of how much "money" I "own", and when competition is the first and most important rule of the game, it structures environment favoring fighting over cooperation. Setting money as the goal limits horizon for all of us. Also, it seems to be aggressive towards alternatives - "everything should be private", and "public good" is socialism, and, as we all know, socialism is bad and might lead to communism <audience gasps here>. So, the narrative from one side is "socialism is bad, nothing gets done, resources are wasted" and the other side talks about rotten consumptionism leading to downfall of values and resources being wasted. It's similar to the left-right false dichotomy of politics, and competitive mindset creates the same pattern as with competition in free market - there are limited resources to be claimed, power does not like being shared, so let the games begin - and may the louder asshole win (which seems to be the general case these days anyway). But in any case my point is that competition and running after scarce resources can make our center of gravity, balance and peace go away. You are not only what you eat, as the old saying goes, you are what you do. And if what you do most of the time is trying to win, it's easy to slip into fighting mode permanently. For most people, I imagine, it is rather counterproductive and unhealthy. Something they would not be doing, if they didn't have to. Something they would not be doing if they could escape the vicious circle of scarcity.
Food, water and shelter are not rewards you should need to compete or struggle for. There is no real reason anymore. The only reason is that if you get something for free, someone else is not making profit. If you grow you own food, you are enemy of someone who wants to sell you food. This is what it looks like in our current version of free market. If it sounds far fetched, read about Phillip Morris International suing countries which tried to put warnings on packs of cigarettes. In fact the whole history of tobacco business is interesting and confirms what I wrote above. Unchecked, the free market has great potential for such histories to happen. However, I admit that this case is weird - government is trying to regulate, corporations are trying to profit from poisoning people, fight fire with fire? It might be said that people should be free to choose their poison, but it's not freedom of choice when the most sophisticated advertisement techniques are used against people who don't know any better. Marketing can be coercion too. Advertisement can be violence :)
At each level of society there is element of contest. From preschool we're taught to be the best, better than our peers. Be stronger, faster, be more. Learn how to walk, how to read, get better notes, get better job, earn more... get rewarded. Competition and reward (aka profit). When people do it for fun it's at least entertaining. When we have to do it for survival, because that's how our world is structured, it's sad. And the scarcity mindset exists and is quite well in both economic paradigms - no matter if the world is owned by private capital or state, people taught to compete will always find something to compete for.
So, is the idea of everything being private really opposite of everything being owned by the state? Everything is being owned, yes. There is a group of people who decides the fate of thing, there is a group having control. Does it matter much if ownership is justified by capital or "will of people"? Isn't the end result exactly the same? Waste of resources, bad decisions, misleadership and all kinds of bad things happen in both public and private companies. Also, competition happens on all levels - it's not only company vs company, but also team vs team ("sales" vs "techies") manager vs manager, etc. Competitive mindset naturally seeks competition instead of cooperation. So, again, it all comes down to one person. To an individual. And, regardless of who owns the company, the state, the public or one man, regardless of how big the hierarchy is, regardless of type of economy, the difference is made by moral standard and sense of ownership of what's below. Of what the individual is in charge of, and whether the individual fully understands what he is in charge of. Do you know Dilbert? It is awesome and true description of the dynamic between someone with power but no technical knowledge and skill, and someone with technical knowledge and skill but no power. Disparity of hierarchy and skills - two parallel structures, or rather two different things. Artificial power structure, tree-like and rigid, versus circular and meshed (dare I say chaotic? or better stick to liquid?) thing where will and skill work like attractors, and assembly of people gets things done because the things need to be done - instead of being requested from above without consideration and reason. Without being forced upon underlings by some artificially imposed authority. And authorities belong to the world of scarcity, profit and competition. This is where the wage slavery comes from, and free market does not help. It creates illusion of freedom instead - its propaganda tells people that everyone can get rich or famous if they just work hard enough, but it's a lie. The system, of which free market is significant part, depends on inequality. It produces it and it only allows very few to stop being wage slaves and be...free. Kind of, at least. But then again inequality is not only how the system is programmed, and it also has secondary purpose, to keep the masses occupied and under control, to make sure that the current state of affairs is maintained. Half of life spent working, and the other is neatly taken care of as well, by entertainment, advertisement and other forms of mass hypnosis. Just to keep us asleep...
