Sony, the global, diversified entertainment and electronics firm, is coming under fire for a promotional event for its Playstation 3 console, an event that gives new meaning to the phrases cut-throat competition and bloody awful:

Electronics giant Sony has sparked a major row over animal cruelty and the ethics of the computer industry by using a freshly slaughtered goat to promote a violent video game. The corpse of the decapitated animal was the centrepiece of a party to celebrate the launch of the God Of War II game for the company’s PlayStation 2 console. Guests at the event were even invited to reach inside the goat’s still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach. Sickening images of the party have appeared in the company’s official PlayStation magazine – but after being contacted by The Mail on Sunday, Sony issued an apology for the gruesome stunt and promised to recall the entire print run. Critics condemned the entertainment giant, which produces scores of Hollywood blockbusters each year, for its "blood lust" and said the grotesque "sacrifice" highlighted increasing concerns over the content of video games and the lengths to which the industry will go to exploit youngsters. At the event, guests competed to see who could eat the most offal – procured elsewhere and intended to resemble the goat’s intestines – from its stomach. They also threw knives at targets and pulled live snakes from a pit with their bare hands. The party was held last month in Athens in homage to the game’s Greek mythology themes. Revellers partied against the floodlit backdrop of the Parthenon.

Commentary

As Wikipedia rightly notes, competition is a pillar of market capitalism. Among its benefits are greater innovation and efficiency, reduced prices, more optimal resource allocation, improved product quality, and expanded customer choice. While competition in the business and economics fields is an undeniably good thing, critics are correct when they state that these benefits do not come without costs. And like all good things, it's possible to have too much of it:

The tendency toward extreme, unhealthy competition has been termed hypercompetitive. This concept originated in Karen Horney's theories on neurosis, specifically the highly aggressive personality type that is characterized as "moving against people." In her view, some people have a need to compete and win at any cost as a means of maintaining their self-worth. These individuals are likely to turn any activity into a competition, and they will feel threatened if they find themselves losing. Researchers have found that men and women who score high on the trait of hypercompetitiveness are more narcissistic and less psychologically healthy than those who score low on the trait... Hypercompetitive individuals generally believe that "winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."

William F. Buckley is reported to have said that "the problem with capitalism is capitalists." I suspect that by this he meant their oft bad behavior. Though second to none in my defense of market capitalism, I agree with the criticism leveled at Sony's brand of cut-throat competition. It's not so much the crassness and blood lust that bothers me. (Who after all could take such antics seriously? I have no doubt the revelers showed up primarily for the free food, the flowing drinks, and the naked girls.) It's that such acts give ammunition to anti-capitalists because it conjures up images of the mistreatment and disregard for the weak, the defenseless, and the losers. Such behavior is the kind of thing to which socialists and their fellow travelers allude when they disparage free-market advocates as "dangerous brutes."

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