Coming back to the issue of competition in Russia. Soviet culture repressed the idea of competition among Soviet people, promoting the idea of cooperation. It worked somewhat since the youth was brought up with the idea of cooperation. At the same time, the control of the government-produced mass culture was limited and on lower level, on a level of families and informal groups of people, the government control failed to work. So competition, crime and violence were strong on lower levels. While mass culture repressed competition among people in socium, it still promoted the idea of competition between ideologies (Communist vs. Western), between countries and associations of countries, and between people in sports. That was largely illogical and absurd. The ideas of cooperation were also present and promoted and again, since everything was directed by government was done in a very lame and inefficient manner.
People still were competing for scarce resources. Competition in a form of waiting lines was huge in Russia. There were also undercover ways of competing by informing, often falsely, law enforcement structures on individual competitors. Crime and violence were huge especially at the top of the government. Stalin personally kept track of thousands of the key people in the country including actors and artists and decided who was going to stay and who will be prosecuted.
In a milder form this practice continues to this day.
In America, the idea of competition between people was and is overemphasized. It is pronounced that people by nature compete and the mainstream culture is dealing with the problems coming from competition. So there is a radically different approach. I see that relations between people are in many ways better in America than in Russia. There is many more conscientious people. Many more people choose to be conscientious, avoid crime and be nice. Yet, the criminals exist and take over the control on higher levels. It is especially obvious in areas of business. Also, the idea of competition instills fear in people, promotes suspicion and reduces trust and cooperation.
The way the business is done is quite inefficient. I researched how small businesses operate in many areas of service, and found, that typically, in most areas of service and manufacture, the control is hijacked by the establishment and prevents people from working. Typically, the production and distribution is very unfair.
For example, there is an unfair competition between small farmers producing healthy produce and large farms producing unhealthy food. Basically the food industry is monopolized and hijacked by criminals who prefer control and gain to the idea of supplying people with good food. The people are manipulated to buy unhealthy food by mind control and mass media. Unhealthy food is advertised, it is sold cheaper, the facts of its unhealthiness are hidden. Sales of food are regulated and restricted in favor of big manufacturers. Small farmers are forced out of business in many hidden unfair and often criminal ways.
Similar ways happen in many other areas of business. The larger associations of providers use unfair means to remove competition and promote unhealthy services to people. Medical industry skewed towards overmedication of people. Doctors are forced to ignore long term consequences of treatments. Alternative medicine is repressed.
In energy industry, alternative sources of energy are repressed.
In manufacture industry, most of manufacture is moved to China, Mexico and other countries, making the process of manufacturing unhealthy and unfair to many people. Global ecology suffers from these practices.
Advertising is one of absurdities of the Western culture. It has a quality of spam. Basically, it is very irresponsible, and blocks communication between people. It is very unhealthy for the society to be regulated by the ability of industry to advertise. In advertising, very little is true about the advertised product and much of advertisement is deception. It destroys trust allows for many distortions.
Typically, the idea of competition is rationalized by the reference for freedom. The ideology postulates that everyone is free to advertise and to do business. In reality, it comes out that due to hijacking, monopolization of most areas and due to guild nature of many industries, there is very little freedom to operate for anyone involved. The freedom is limited by finances, advertising and media which are hijacked.
Similar situation was in Soviet Union. The State proclaimed that everyone is free and it was true except, the documents of each person, their life and fate were the property of the State. (I say this with irony. Of course, if a person is limited in what they are allowed to say, where they go, live and work. It means that freedoms were greatly restricted). In the West, the individual freedoms are restricted by monopolization of most areas of business, by unhealthy advertising practices and by media control.
In China, the ideas of competition are developed somewhat differently. I have limited knowledge about their culture, but I see that Chinese people combine the extreme competitiveness with ability to live together and that this combination is quite different than in Russia and the West. I also noted a similarity in that Russian and Chinese people take evil nature of the state as given.
While in the West, there is a common belief in a good and honest government, in Asia, Russia and many cultures of the third world people take selfish and evil government as given. It is culturally accepted that county leaders are selfish and utilize their power against needs of the country. This is very unfortunate.
Somehow Chinese progress very fast in industry and economy, while retaining a some sort of balance between individual competition, acceptance of negative government and ideas of balance and cooperation. There is some sort of sense of combining of competition with fair play on all levels. The same very people which compete with each other also play by some sort of moral rules and there is a respect to collective good and collective opinion. I don't know much more about Chinese culture, but I find this phenomenon worth mentioning.
In Japan, there is also an economic rise. The economy of Japan was much helped by the fact that their military activity was much restricted after the war. Both Japan and Germany were controlled by US and their economy wasn't wasting effort on producing weapons. That greatly helped their economies.