In Peter Thiels wonderful book, ZERO TO ONE, he describes a counterintuitive point about entrepreneurship and economics, one that vastly differentiates itself from the mainstream point of view.
In it, he makes the case for monopolies. Although, a caveat is in place to describe a certain type of monopoly different than the industrial age style of say, STANDARD OIL. The good types of monopolies he describes are ones like GOOGLE, or PAYPAL. Companies that created a whole new category, and are the best at what they do.
His point is that competition is bad, or more apply, misunderstood. Google hasn't had any competition in what it's best at, "search" for many years.
This point can be applied to other endeavors aside from business. On a personal level, competition often works against our goals. It places us in a situation where we cannot think creatively because we are striving for incremental advantages of doing things that are already visible.
But when you stop looking at your work as competition, new ideas can appear because those borders are loosened. You create new categories, when you go from 0 to 1.
It's an interesting idea to contemplate.
In Peter Thiel world, technology and innovation is our savior, with an emphasis on financial rewards. A possible counterpoint to some of his idea's is Jaron Lanier, the father of virtual reality, who describes the tech monopolies as the possible end of the middle class in his book, WHO OWNS THE FUTURE.
Both have interesting books to look into.