Difference between cooperation and other economic system
Answers
Explanation:
We have myopically come to believe that “survival of the fittest” is synonymous with competition and is the highest expression of our nature. Yet survival of the fittest also includes those creatures, including humans, who successfully and continuously cooperate to survive.
Case in point: Lions adorn the flags of many nations as symbols of individual power and unparalleled ferocity — think of King Richard I of England, who was, after all, called Richard the Lionheart. But as we all know, lions actually hunt and cooperate in packs in order to find and secure food.
In fact, the natural world is replete with numerous examples of strength in numbers, from flocks of birds flying together to reduce wind drag during migration, to schools of fish swimming together to increase the chance of survival in the face of predation. In the human world, armies are vast cooperative enterprises in which troops “watch each others backs” when confronting enemies.
Science has acknowledged these possibilities for decades, even though the subject receives little attention from the popular press. One notable exception, however, is a recent Scientific American cover story entitled “Why We Help: The Evolution of Cooperation.” For me, it’s an article that can help bring an overlooked and understudied aspect of capitalism into sharper view: the fact that the capitalist system, like nature itself, depends on cooperation as much as competition.
To be sure, we tend to think of capitalism in the same way that we think of survival of the fittest — that it is one of the ultimate expressions of competition. In fact, it is difficult to find a definition of the word that does not emphasize competition in its description. Consider the following:
Investopedia defines capitalism as “an economic system based on a free market, open competition [emphasis mine], profit motive and private ownership of the means of production. Capitalism encourages private investment and business, compared to a government-controlled economy. Investors in these private companies (i.e., shareholders) also own the firms and are known as capitalists.”
Meanwhile the Collins English Dictionary defines capitalism as “an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, characterized by the freedom of capitalists to operate or manage their property for profit in competitive [emphasis mine] conditions.”
But consider the myriad ways that capitalism depends on cooperation:
That ultimate capitalist vehicle, the corporation, is not just a legal business entity but a vehicle of, and for, cooperation. In fact, alongside nation-states, corporations are the largest cooperatives ever imagined by people. What else besides cooperation describes Walmart’s 2.2 million employees working together toward competitive ends? What else besides cooperation describes McDonald’s 1.9 million employees working together toward competitive ends? Or China National Petroleum? Or Carrefour?
Philosophically, a key part of what separates capitalism from its economic opposite, communism, is the level at which decision making is undertaken. Communism seeks to equally distribute its resources among economic players — but at the expense of the freedom of choice of buyer and seller. So decisions are usually made by an authoritarian economic entity, like a central planning committee. In contrast, capitalism trusts buyer and seller to both consent to a transaction. Put another way, capitalism allows — in fact, insists — that buyers and sellers cooperate in a transaction rather than just accept a third party’s mandated good and price.