Competition, Cooperation or Both?
Are we to learn something from evolution? Well, it would probably be that
both Competition and Cooperation are necessary... Thus only a balance of
the two (which neither communism nor capitalism offers) can constitute a
stable political system... This interesting article illustrates the point...
Spectrum Five: Competition vs. Cooperation
Summary
Humans, like all animals, form cooperative groups to compete for limited
resources. All life is ultimately competitive, because the natural
tendency of any population is to explode, although it is kept in check
by the limited food supply (and other factors). Because there are more
animals than food, animals must compete to survive. In situations where
the food supply is somehow sufficient, deadly competition falls.
Liberals therefore advocate the creation of a sustainable economy, where
the population is kept constant (through birth control) and resources
are used no faster than they can be replaced. The result will be a more
cooperative and civil society.
Argument
In the debate over what type of society is best, conservatives generally
favor more competitive societies, whereas liberals favor more
cooperative ones. Let's attempt to see which side is correct, by
reviewing the fundamentals of competition and cooperation: The origins
of competition
Perhaps the first thing to note is that all life is ultimately
competitive. For many centuries, biologists have known that the natural
tendency of the animal population is to explode, but the limited food
supply keeps it in check. (There are also other limiting factors, like
space, climate, resources, etc.) Because there are more creatures than
food, this means that some will starve to death. Thus, in order to
survive, animals must compete for food, killing each other if need be.
(1)
The above observation is one of the most firmly proven facts of modern
biology. It's implications, however, have been deeply controversial. The
18th century economist Thomas Malthus argued that giving more food to
the poor was self-defeating, since it would only expand their population
and create more of the same hunger and misery that welfare was designed
to alleviate. Malthus therefore argued that welfare programs should be
halted. Malthus' proposal sparked a bitter political debate -- the poor
charged that he was heartless, while the rich congratulated him for
applying science to the issue of welfare. Interestingly, the controversy
itself was indicative of the class warfare that rages for society's
limited resources.
Likewise, Charles Darwin found the concept of deadly competition
important for developing his theories of natural selection and survival
of the fittest. Darwin theorized that if animals must compete to
survive, then the winners would be those with the strongest traits,
which would then be passed on to their offspring. Meanwhile, those with
weaker traits would be killed before they could breed, and would be
dropped from the gene pool. It is important to note that even if you
don't believe in evolution, natural selection indisputably occurs in all
other competitive systems. These range from individual firms competing
on the free market to individual workers competing for job promotions.
Indeed, the fact that natural selection occurs everywhere else is a
strong argument that it occurs in biology as well. Natural selection has
developed in humans a natural desire to compete. Those with
non-competitive natures would have lost their struggle for survival, and
disappeared from the gene pool a long time ago. On the other hand, those
with an overly intense desire to compete would have become dead heroes,
and likewise failed to pass on their traits. Thus, a reasonable
attraction to competition is both healthy and natural. The
competitiveness of humanity has worked itself even into our most basic
definitions of the social sciences. Economics is formally defined as the
study of "the efficient allocation of scarce resources among competing
uses." (2) Politics is defined as the "relations between special
interest groups competing for limited resources." (3) War is a violent
competition for resources -- especially land -- hence Karl von
Clausewitz' famous remark that "War is nothing more than the
continuation of politics by other means." Because competitions are won
by those with the most power, political science is defined as "An
academic discipline which studies power and the distribution of power in
different types of political systems." (4) Even though these different
fields have taken different routes to reach the same conclusion, the
idea that humans compete for limited resources is one that elegantly and
coherently unites the social sciences.
The origins of cooperation
But imagine what it would be like to live in a society where each
individual competes against everyone else, without any cooperation at
all. You wouldn't dare walk outside, for your neighbor could shoot you
and take all your property. Nor could you rely on the police to protect
you, since law enforcement is a form of social cooperation. In a
perfectly competitive world, only the strongest or luckiest would
survive.
But what if you were fortunate enough to be one of the strongest or
luckiest? After killing off most of society, you would only find
yourself among survivors who were highly competent killers themselves,
and the terror would start anew. And even if you emerged the final
victor, the rewards would be slight… how rich and satisfied can you be
when you're a hermit?
All species avoid this bleak scenario through cooperation. Among humans,
cooperation can be divided into two categories: friendly and hostile. An
example of friendly cooperation is the alliances you join to compete
more efficiently against other individuals or groups. A good example is
the business firm, where employees take specialized, interdependent jobs
and work together to compete on the free market. The result is higher
quality products and greater work efficiency than if they competed
alone.
Hostile cooperation, on the other hand, is what exists between
competitors. This may seem paradoxical, yet there is a good reason why
competitors often cooperate with each other: the rewards are greater.
For example, if everyone fights for a piece of the pie, then the fight
may become so costly that the pie will be nearly gone when it comes time
to divide it. It's much better to forget the fight and come to an
agreement from the very beginning. An example of hostile cooperation is
family members who are contesting a million-dollar will. If they fight
for the money too hard, then no one will get any, because it will all go
to their lawyers' fees. Hence, it's in their interest to strike a deal.
As with competition, a moderated desire to cooperate is natural and
healthy. Those with non-cooperative natures would have very low survival
rates, as would those who cooperated so much that they did not look out
after their own self-interests in a competitive world. It is for this
reason that people take a healthy enjoyment in belonging to a group,
practicing teamwork, helping others, etc. The interplay between
competition and cooperation Nature has divided all life into natural
alliances that compete for survival: namely, species. Members of the
same species generally do not kill each other in their fight for limited
resources, but instead work together to kill members of other species.
However, cooperation within species is not as perfect as it would seem.
Even in normal times, there is subdued competition within the group, as
members vie for positions of power and status. One famous example is
primates, who divide themselves into alpha apes, beta apes, etc. It is
interesting to note that among primates, male status is acquired through
conflict. Among females, however, the opposite occurs: conflicts are
resolved by the female's status. Hierarchies are found in countless
species, but they are especially extreme in humans. Competition within
the group becomes more severe as resources become scarcer. When the
situation becomes desperate enough, members of the same species are
perfectly capable of turning on each other and killing each other. Just
one example is the preying mantis, a specie which solves the problem of
scarcity by allowing the female to eat the male after mating. Another is
the chimpanzee, the closest human relative. From her long-term studies
in Africa, Jane Goodall has reported that chimps sometimes divide into
tribes, whereupon the larger kills the smaller.
Humans are no different. War is an obvious example of deadly competition
within the human species, but most people don't realize that the same
continues even during times of "peace." In our competitive economy,
those who lack the skills, education, talent or opportunity to compete
well become poor. And the poor suffer from death rates that are at least
six times higher than the rich. (5) This higher death rate is due to a
lack of resources: namely, health care, nutritious food, toxic-free
environments, winter heating, information and education, and countless
other means and devices that would protect and prolong their lives.
Here, critics may object that the above observation is based on a faulty
assumption. We do not live in a zero-sum economy (where someone's gain
is necessarily someone else's loss). We actually live in a (slightly)
positive-sum economy, where the standard of living is rising for
everyone. This is certainly true, but our standard of living grows
extremely slowly -- whereas the population pressing against it tries to
grow much faster. Therefore it's still quite possible for a positive-sum
economy to experience deadly competition for limited resources. To
understand this even more clearly, let's look at the larger picture:
Carrying capacity is what biologists call the limited ability of the
land to sustain a population. This includes the amount of available
food, water, resources and space, as well as the hospitality of the
climate, the presence of other predators, etc. Needless to say, the
greater the land's carrying capacity, the greater the population it can
sustain.
Throughout most of human history, the carrying capacity of the land has
been quite low, with humans increasing it only slowly and painfully.
They accomplished this by inventing new forms of productive technology,
like the plow, the mill, the granary, etc. But growth in productivity
was far too slow to accommodate all the humans born into the world. The
result was frequent starvation, famine and deadly competition for
resources. To resolve this, many societies frequently practised birth
control, ranging from abortion to infanticide. But with the advent of
the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, the land's carrying
capacity soared. Through better science and technology, humans have
learned how to tap the earth's resources at an ever growing rate. The
result has been a population explosion. It took from the dawn of
humanity until the year 1800 for the earth's population to reach 1
billion. But by 1960 it had already reached 3 billion, and by 1998 it
will reach 6 billion.
This trend has two ominous implications. First, dramatically increasing
the land's carrying capacity may have raised the individual's standard
of living, but it has also increased the number of individuals competing
for these new resources. Therefore, deadly competition remains a
problem.
Second, the earth's resources are ultimately limited, and it is
absolutely inevitable that our carrying capacity will one day stop
growing, and even shrink. What will happen then? Biologists already know
the answer, from their historical observations of species that are hit
by shrinking resources. The result will be a sickening plunge in the
population, as famine, disease, war and other deadly competition take
their toll.
As long as birth control keeps the population below the land's carrying
capacity, or humans can somehow increase carrying capacity forever, then
deadly competition is greatly reduced. People can live their entire
lives without resorting to war, murder, or even subjecting the poor to
mortal deprivations. Unfortunately, once the population starts pressing
against the land's limited resources again, deadly competition resumes.
The solution that leftists propose is the creation of a sustainable
economy. This would involve holding the population constant through
birth control, and using resources no faster than they could be
replaced. We would then use our abundance and technology to allow
everyone a good standard of living. There would be no need to compete
for survival, and no need to kill anyone to survive. This would tilt the
balance towards cooperation, not competition. Critics charge that humans
are naturally competitive animals -- after all, they evolved that way.
To create a perfectly cooperative society, they charge, is both
impossible and utopian. This is certainly true, but fortunately, there
is a way around it. Competition for survival is only one of the many
thousands of ways that humans compete. Humans also fulfill their desire
to compete through games, sports, contests, social status, career
status, academic status, even mating. Eliminating the need to compete
for survival would hardly eliminate the countless other ways that humans
compete. Competition could still be used to improve society, even a
sustainable one.
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