Friedrich List never once mentioned competitiveness directly by name, but he nonetheless remains an important figure in the pre-history of the Competitiveness Agenda. It would be impossible to present a comprehensive account of the rhetorical structure underpinning that agenda without at least some discussion of his National System of Political Economy. It was List who first made the case in the 1840s for collective national sacrifice in the interests of stronger future macroeconomic performance. There is no plausible philosophical mechanism in his work to explain why people should agree to the privations following from this sacrifice, in much the same way that no plausible philosophical mechanism operates in the modern-day Competitiveness Agenda to explain why the population should remain passive in the face of a race to the bottom. His argument for choosing national economic champions in the name of future society-wide enrichment therefore looks like an unsubstantiated assertion, and the same surely also applies to the Competitiveness Agenda.

http://foolsgold.international/friedrich-list-pre-history-modern-day-competitiveness-thinking/