Do not let them teach you to settle for less
Italy means value, quality and craft. Excessive competition becomes dangerous when it teaches young people that only price, speed and quantity matter.
There is an elegant lie that has been repeated for years as though it were common sense: more competition always means greater prosperity. More offers, more choice, more opportunities, lower prices. Put like that, it sounds unassailable. In part it is. But only in part.
Competition is useful when it rewards those who do better. It becomes toxic when it forces everyone to do worse: work more, earn less, study less, train less, take less care of customers, lower standards and accept ever more precarious conditions simply to stay in the game.
That is excessive competition: not a free market, but a hollowed-out one. A race won not by the most capable, but by whoever can cost least. And when price becomes the only measure, sooner or later everyone loses: serious businesses, workers, customers, professionals, young people.
For those entering work today, the risk is enormous. They are told to be flexible, fast, available, competitive. Fine words, certainly. But they can also become the elegant vocabulary used to ask a generation to be worth little. Because where everything must cost less, labour ends up costing less too. Where service is sold cheap, expertise is demeaned. Where quality is treated as a luxury, wages inevitably become precarious.
That is why this is not merely an economic question. It is a civic one. Better competition also protects employees’ wages, because it defends the value of work. If a business can survive only by cutting training, pay, professionalism and care, perhaps it is not really competitive. It is merely weak.
Italy ought to understand this before anyone else. This country has always meant value, quality, craft, proportion, taste, detail. It sets standards in fashion, design, food and farming, engineering, crafts, hospitality and high-end manufacturing. We did not become recognisable around the world because we cost less. We became recognisable because we knew how to do things better.
Young people, then, must be told something simple: do not let yourselves be persuaded that the future is all about quantity. It is not. The future lies in rare expertise, seriousness, care and the ability to make yourself indispensable. A craft practised well is worth more than a hundred indifferent performances. Solid professional expertise is worth more than a thousand hurried improvisations. A country that stops teaching this is merely preparing its own decline.
Concrete choices are needed. Schools, universities and technical training must once again teach the economic value of quality, rather than simply adjustment to the market. Public incentives should reward businesses that truly invest in training, stable employment, productivity and professional development. Essential sectors also need clear indicators of service quality, complaints, response times and citizens’ actual satisfaction. Not more bureaucracy, but visible accountability.
Competition should not be feared. It should be raised to a higher standard. Because a country does not die only when it loses industries. It also dies when it teaches its children that being worth little is normal.