If competition has its evils, it prevents greater evils. … It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefnitely in a course once chosen. Let them one attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate. … Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indspensable to progress.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) English philosopher and economist

Principles of Political Economy, 4.7.7 (1848)