I don&#x27;t know if this was intended as a criticism or agreement with the person you replied to. Either way, competing on levels that are far removed from the bottom hierarchy of needs is something we should consider a good thing, whether or not the sheen wears off for some people<i>. The problems with our hypercompetition for many of the basics are that it produces cheating because there&#x27;s such intense pressure to stay&#x2F;get ahead (&quot;The Cheating Culture&quot;), and that failure can leave you with absolute, rather than just relative, levels of privation.<p></i> As far as the sheen wearing off, I&#x27;m not sure I&#x27;d agree with that. In extant communities that have no rewards outside of their  status hierarchy, people continue to participate, often with great gusto: gaming, stamp collecting, meme creation, drawing, etc. People do them for both intrinsic rewards, and for status rewards only within that hierarchy or in &quot;nearby&quot; hierarchies.<p>Even Trotsky thought &quot;the powerful force of competition which, in bourgeois society, has the character of market competition, will not disappear in a socialist society, but, to use the language of psychoanalysis, will be sublimated, that is, will assume a higher and more fertile form&quot; &quot;individual competition will have the widest scope.&quot; In the cases where the sheen does wear off, people can always switch, as they do now, to other areas (get bored of WoW, start playing Dark Souls, or go to a completely different hierarchy [games -&gt; painting].)