c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is a pastor, writer and software developer living in Winston-Salem, N.C.)

UNDATED _ I waited a full week after Christmas before daring to enter Best Buy.

Even so, I found the computer department crawling with customers and no sales help in sight. The one salesman who did come near had an entourage of 10 people waiting to ask questions.

I spied a salesman. He passed me off to someone else. That young man found most laptop computers out of stock, but did see one. Before unlocking the cabinet, he started a spiel for extended service. I said I wasn’t interested. He persisted. And persisted, saying,”You can either listen to me, or you won’t get a laptop.” Out the door walked a $2,000 sale.

Welcome to the era of full employment.

Ads for Christmas sales help went unanswered this year. Cash registers stood idle while customers waited in line for an hour at the large stores which now dominate retail sales.

Fast-food outlets can’t find enough help. Even in a relatively moribund economy like Winston-Salem, N.C., where I live,”Help wanted”signs stay up for months, and job fairs prove to be a seller’s market. Public schools can’t find teachers. Temporary-help agencies pay for referrals.

On the one hand, full employment means a strong economy. On the other hand, lack of competition spells trouble. Why should Anson, of Best Buy, care about a particular sale, when 10 other customers wait in line?

Competition is dwindling throughout the economy. A decade of mega-mergers has left us with a few large players on each field, from hospitals to aircraft to computers to banks to bookstores. With profitability increasingly dependent on vast computer systems and price breaks for big buyers, the tendency toward consolidation will only accelerate, as will declines in service and variety.

Lost in the impeachment noise this fall was an equally disturbing political reality: we held a non-election. I don’t mean a paucity of people voting, but a lack of serious competition among the candidates.

Incumbency is everything nowadays. If a politician can avoid scandal and demonstrable incompetence, he or she is virtually certain of winning re-election.

It seems to me that competition in ideas is dwindling, too. Most cities are down to one newspaper. In publishing, the same few authors keep writing on the same few themes. Women’s magazines chase the same four topics: sex, dieting, sex and dieting. Regional literature and theater have disappeared.

I figure the economy will self-correct. The entrepreneurial spirit is strong, a united Europe is emerging, Japan will rebound, and the Internet promises a playing field that, for now at least, seems open and level. Besides, Circuit City has a store across the street from Best Buy.

But non-competition in the political and cultural realms seems more worrisome. Congressmen sound positively gleeful as they declare their independence from popular opinion in impeachment proceedings. If that were a sudden onset of high-minded statesmanship, we could applaud. But all they’re really saying in the absence of competitive elections is, let the public be damned.

I have no brief for or against Al Gore _ who has any opinion of a vice president? _ but what does it do to the shaping of his candidacy and his party’s agenda when the 2000 convention is a done deal?

Cultural competition is harder to pin down. At one level, diversity seems greater than ever, thanks to Hispanic immigrants and emerging generations. But I sense a drawing inward, a movement of life indoors, and a public discourse that is mainly expressed in such limited-menu decisions as where to shop.

Quirkiness seems out of fashion. Debating is a school activity, not a public reality. Religion’s voice has become safe and non-offensive, not because the denominationally-minded have discovered oneness beneath God’s canopy, but because highly mobile worshippers expect the same fare wherever they go.

Not only do we miss the spice of new ideas, but we miss the breadth of vision that they produce. The center, by its nature, tends to value conformity. New ideas, new products, new energy, new solutions to nagging problems usually start on the fringe. The fringe isn’t exactly helpless. But it seems to me that the stale and self-serving hold sway longer than they should.

I worry when guarding uncontested turf matters more than creativity or vision.

DEA END EHRICH