Competition vs. cooperation

A thoughtful piece by the Conversable Economist, Timothy Taylor:

Cooperation refers to a situation in which the participants seek out win-win outcomes from working together. Thus, the opposite of cooperation would be a situation in which such win-win outcomes are difficult or discouraged. For example, this could reflect a situation of lawlessness or a set of social norms in which people expect that cooperative agreements are likely to be broken—and, thus, the incentive to cooperate is low. 

If both competition and cooperation are understood as voluntary choices (and, after all, "involuntary cooperation" is an oxymoron), then a fully planned economy would be the opposite of both competition and cooperation. When government dictates prices and quantities, a planned economy eliminates the incentives of market participants—whether suppliers, producers, or consumers—either to compete or to cooperate.

Those of us who self-identify as economists should not wear the terminology of "competition" as a badge of shame, while wistfully contemplating a presumed ideal of cooperation. For the study of economics, as in the real-world economy, the concepts and practices of competition and cooperation are inevitably interlocking.