Self-Preferencing and the Level Playing Field

By: Ramsi Woodcock (What Am I Missing?)

I, too, have been enamored of sports metaphors in antitrust. How can the level playing field not convince?

Two wrestlers meet on the floor. If it is uphill for one and downhill for the other, neither will excel. One will find it too easy to win, and so train little. The other will find it too hard to win, and so train little. So, too, in business. If Amazon stands at the top of the hill, because Amazon owns the floor and has chosen to put itself there, then it will do little to improve itself, for it can too easily win against the third-party sellers that it has placed at the bottom of the hill.

But the level playing field is but the pretense of fairness. A way, only, of highlighting a much greater unfairness that we in fact revere. For when the athletes meet, one wins, and not, we like to think, by chance, but because one is better. And why is that one better? Forsooth, because that one does not compete on a level playing field at all. His muscles are better developed. He has better stamina. He is a quicker thinker. He has the focus of mind required to train more. His intuition is better. He has a better spatial sense. And so on. That is, he has an advantage that he does not share with his opponent.

Let us say it is his muscles. In muscle space the field is not level; he stands at the top. And he self-preferences, for he does not, say, starve himself for a week before the bout in order to waste his muscles a bit and thereby level the playing field in muscle space. No! He seizes his advantage. He uses it to win—inevitably to win—and despite this inevitability he feels that he deserves this win, that it is an expression of who he is and not of the tilt of a field.

Why should he feel that his victory is about him given that it was not earned on a truly level playing field? Because it is not a complete leveling that we really seek in any contest. What we seek is to reveal the character of a field that we value. Once we have isolated that field, we glory in whatever tilt we find to it.

If what interests us is who is the strongest, then we want to level the irrelevant fields, and then watch which way the parties slide on the field of strength. If it is the strength of wrestlers, then we level the floor, so that we can better perceive the tilt in their relative strengths…