Another idea Toynbee dismissed was that free competition was universally beneficial to economic and societal progress, especially as reflected in its apotheosis in Social Darwinism, which promoted laissez-faire capitalism. Toynbee did not equate "a struggle for mere existence and a struggle for a particular kind of existence". From the very beginning of history, he argued, all human civilisation was essentially designed to "interfere with this brute struggle. We intend to modify the violence of the fight, and to prevent the weak being trampled under foot." Although economic competition does have its advantages, being the driving force behind technical progress, these were "gained at the expense of an enormous waste of human life and labour, which might be avoided by regulation". Toynbee suggested a differentiation between competition in production on the one hand, and competition in the distribution of goods on the other: