Competition, Winning, Diversification

According to Smith, the primary value of Competition is to diversify Supply, thereby countering the tendency of monopolistic forces to elevate prices.  Thus, winning per se, is irrelevant to participation.  But, the possibility of winning is essential to the competitive drive.  Hence, there is a discrepancy in his system between the subjective and objective meanings of Competition, indicative of an incoherence, or, perhaps, of an operation analogous to Hegel's 'ruse of Reason', in which a transcendent principle deludes an individual into a course of behavior by presenting it as potentially personally beneficial.  The positing of such a transcendent operation would seem to violate Smith's Empiricist methodology, but no more so than the positing of an Invisible Hand.  In this case, the effects of the purported principle are plainly visible as a diversification of the market.