A ‘chope’ culture – how rushing to get ahead leads to longer BTO queues and rising COE prices

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Competitive bidding may be a rational way to decide who gets to enjoy a scarce resource, but it has its drawbacks. It empowers the rich who can afford to pay and creates a sense of being left out among those who can’t afford to pay even though they may need a car (for example, a family with a disabled child or frail elders). 

To be sure, competitiveness need not be negative – in sport, especially, it can spur people to be disciplined, to train, to improve, and to outdo themselves. But being hyper-competitive and wanting to win at all costs can lead people to take drugs to enhance their performance, or sabotage others to derail the competition. 

people with a competitive worldview tend to have an orientation towards social dominance, desiring to get ahead of others, to win and suppress others. Such attitudes erode cooperation and altruism and, at their worst, cause the competitive individuals to experience constant stress, anxiety, fear of losing, alienation and loneliness.

a 2011 study that found that hyper-competitive individuals – who have a need to win at all cost – were more impatient and irritable than their less-competitive counterparts and had higher self-reported health problems, including heart disease.

The dark side of such hyper-competitiveness is that it exerts a high cost on the individual and those around them, and is also an unproductive way to manage a team or to lead, as it creates an unsupportive space where people do not feel safe to learn or try.

when it comes to policy design, there is a growing sense that rules need to be tweaked for Singapore to shift from a hyper-competitive, to a more equitable society. 

Qn: Examine the claim that the world is too competitive today. (ACJC Prelim 2023)