In ecology, the competitive exclusion principle,sometimes referred to as Gause's law of competitive exclusion or just Gause's law, is a proposition that states that two species competing for the same resource cannot coexist at constant population values, if other ecological factors remain constant. When one species has even the slightest advantage or edge over another then the one with the advantage will dominate in the long term. One of the two competitors will always overcome the other, leading to either the extinction of this competitor or an evolutionary or behavioral shift toward a different ecological niche. The principle has been paraphrased into the maxim "complete competitors cannot coexist".
Georgyi Gause, the Russian microbiologist... interested in competition, discovered this principle. Gause inoculated a simple, finite culture with Paramecium, and... got logistic population growth. These Paramecium eat bacteria, and there is only so much food in a culture to support a certain number of Paramecium.
Then he put two different species of Paramecium in the same culture. He got lowered growth rates of both populations. Even more interestingly, one species always drove the other to extinction.
“This led Gause to come forth with a famous ‘principle’ that would dominate ecological research for nearly the entire century: Two species that use resources exactly the same way cannot coexist. One will drive the other to extinction.”
The Competitive Exclusion Principle allows us to see what’s really happening here. Two life forms, one genetic and one memetic, are battling for control of the biosphere. According to the principle, the loser must adapt to a different niche or go extinct. There are no other choices.
The modern corporation appeared only about two hundred years ago, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.
Over the last few hundred years, it appears that Homo sapiens has chosen adaptation rather than extinction, so he is now subservient to the modern corporation and its allies. Depending on your point of view, his new niche is a powerless employee and consumer, or a Corporatis profitis slave. Perhaps it’s all three. This transition is still in progress in the less industrialized areas of the world.
Once Homo sapiens ceded control of the biosphere to the New Dominant Life Form, an ecological niche succession event occurred. This has happened billions of times before in the genetic world, as one species overcame another in a struggle for survival in the same niche. It’s probably happened trillions of times in the memetic world.
