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| The
Relationship Between |
|
| COMPETITION
and COOPERATION |
Ian Mason
written 29.3.99
updated 16.1.02 and12.1.03
Many people say that people can’t really cooperate to achieve a caring society. That we are individuals who have no ability to coordinate our activities together into a caring economy and other cooperative activities.
Yet there are simple reasons why we have found it hard to cooperate in the past. And reasons as to why we can find it increasingly easier to cooperate in the future.
The Cooperation Relationship
The
basic cooperation principle concerns a simple relationship between desire and knowledge. |
The desire will help generate the knowledge, and the knowledge will help generate the desire. Yet if the knowledge does not develop quickly enough then the people will split up and go off and do things in their own individualist ways. It is only during times of ignorance that these individualist ways would be competitive to a significantly negative degree.
History
Lets put this into perspective in relation to the history of the world.
When we were living as indigenous hunters and gatherers we had simple local living, and the knowledge to achieve it all did not have to be great. So people found it easy to hold all the knowledge within themselves and cooperate, even if many aboriginal tribes had endemic arguing in them.
Then when humans started to form into towns and cities after the advent of agriculture, then the amount of activities and people, and the pace of the growing societies, required an enormous amount of knowledge to be able to manage it all successfully. Humans did not have this knowledge and the people lost their creative desire and ability. Individualism and competition has often reigned in broader societies over the last ten or twelve thousand years.
Yet as humans generate a complex awareness of the world that they live in and develop the knowledge and understanding of how to live in stable, caring, sustainable communities, that are attractive to everyone, then humans can again regain that cooperative desire and fulfil these living plans. And once we develop that knowledge for successful living we are unlikely to lose it. Meaning that a cooperative future may be assured.
This competition-cooperation relationship explains why we currently compete in education, trying to score higher marks, in politics, in economics, and in our social systems, trying to beat the other side in competitive games and sports. Yet as the world develops a knowledge, more and more cooperative “everybody wins” (or perhaps nobody loses) games can become apparent. Life enhancing education will, and already is, developing. Cooperative, power-to-all politics will occur. And cooperative fair and equitable economics as well.
Economic Cooperation in Community
So what would be the relationship between cooperation and competition in an aware community in the future?
Let us imagine a community is meeting to develop its plans for the year. For those projects where there is an awareness of how to produce efficiently and to an adequate quality, the people can be pleased to collectively fund these activities, leading to cooperation. Yet when production processes are not well known, and efficiency not guaranteed, or the project is too risky, then the people may not have the confidence to collectively fund the project and not cooperate to achieve it.
Yet this does not mean that nothing should be done. If sufficient knowledge is not known then it can be appropriate to encourage projects funded by individuals because this means people are trying different ways. As various individuals or small groups go about their individual activities chasing a profit and risking a loss, then the knowledge of how to develop these products develops over time, improving the efficiency and production quality. Then, when an adequate knowledge has developed, the people will become confident to collectively fund it, and the individual funding can be changed to collective funding. And a cooperative economy for that production process will occur.
This is the advantage of individual funded competitive activity. That it allows the development of knowledge where there is not adequate knowledge to start with. And it explains that capitalism, for all its problems, has come to our rescue in the past. In an aware community this individual funded activity will not break down to negative, over-greedy competition. It is only during times of ignorance that degrading competition will occur.
The Future
This means that in the future there will be collectively funded cooperative activity for established, stable and often simple processes, and individually funded competitive activity for new, unstable, and often complex processes. The collective funding will support the general, basic activities of the community, and the individual funding will add diversity, creativity and new ideas to the community.
As the relationships between cooperation principles develop it can become rather clear when to cooperate and when to do individual activity.
Cooperation
Examples
23.9.00
Here are some examples to compliment and explain the above essay.
The Tennis Court Example
The tennis court example is a good one because it displays clearly how people in the current individual system can make good money from a local communities lack of community discussion and knowledge.
A community, sitting down to decide whether they want to fund a tennis court, if they don't know the mathematics of court construction and maintenance costs, or how much tennis they really want to play, may decide not to collectively fund a tennis court. However, rather than have no tennis court in the community, an individual may apply in the community to self-fund a court and hire it out to people. They will spend nearly $15000 to build the court and charge perhaps $6 an hour for people to play tennis. The community may think that this is fair because the owner risks making a loss if hardly anyone wants to play tennis.
However, a bit more knowledge may change the community's mind about whether they want to collectively fund a tennis court. Where I come from some of the tennis courts are in peoples back yards. They make $6 an hour from people playing tennis in their back yards. The neighbours make no money. Yet this can mean perhaps $300 per week in court fees as income for the owner. This is $15 000 per year. Yet the tennis court only costs $15 000 to make with a ten year life. So the owner recoups their investment in one year and the rest is profit for the next ten years, as long as people will come and play tennis.
If a community collectively funded a tennis court, the fees for an hour would drop from $6 an hour to perhaps 60 or 70 cents an hour. With this simple knowledge (even though more knowledge will be needed, such as a basic court maintenance plan) many people in the community can increase their confidence in such a project and their desire to collectively fund it. One hundred people willing to put in $150 up front would mean free tennis for those people for ten years. This is the amount that a regular player, paying $3 a week in the capitalist individually funded system (times 2 people = $6 an hour), would pay in just one year! Any maintenance fees can be paid for by the reduced fees of the players beyond the one hundred up front people.
In this case collective funding meant a 90% reduction in charges to the community. The knowledge of various costs and the life of the construction, plus the knowledge of whether people want to play tennis, may increase the desire of the people to get a plan together for cooperative funding. The knowledge raises the desire and confidence for cooperation, and this means that the people hang together long enough to develop a good plan.
On the other hand, a group of people funding a court may find that after construction, they are not as keen on tennis as they thought. Of the $150 they put forward, they may only play tennis for several months before getting sick of it. They may still share in profits from other people playing on the court and paying weekly fees. However, if outside the group users are scarce, then the original collectively funded project may prove to be a collective loss, and regarded as a failed project, rather than a success.
This is when a middle of the road scenario would help. If people are unsure whether they would like to play tennis enough to warrant a group funding, an individual may be encouraged to fund the court, risking a profit or loss. If it is found that the people are playing regular tennis, then they may decide to take over the court cooperatively. To do this they would need to pay the owner more than the initial costs, so that the owner makes a profit for introducing a successful activity venture to the community. They may buy the court for $12 000 to add to the $6 000 in fees that the owner had already made before the community had the knowledge that they would continue to play tennis, giving them the confidence and desire to cooperatively fund the court. In this way, individual activity gives way to collective activity. The owner would relinquish the court because they are guaranteed a profit, and the competition/cooperation principle is a well understood principle in the community which all the members agree to. (In the current capitalist system the owner is likely to hang onto the tennis court because it is a good investment, and leave the fees high and excessive.) And in the community the people will the happy enough to continue paying the $6 excessive fee to the individual owner, knowing that there is a good chance that it will be reduced dramatically in the future.
The above example is an good one because it stands out because of the excessive difference in fees between the individually funded situation and the collectively funded situation. Most projects and activities in society are not as clear cut as the one above, yet there are many examples of a chance for collective funding of tools, machines, vehicles, toys, books, computers, games, sports facilities, theatre, food systems, household appliance bulk purchasing and more. Any time people are happy with the outcome, that there is a adequate knowledge of what the people want, satisfactory plan based on knowledge, and satisfactory pricing and costs, then this helps create cooperative, collective activity. Yet when this knowledge is not apparent, individual activity still has its place, and is very useful in helping develop knowledge.
A Food Production Example
Here is one more simple example about food production. Some people in a community may say that they are happy to collectively fund a gardener and neighbourhood garden, paying the gardener $500 per week. Yet if the way that the gardener produced was not very efficient, then the fruit and vegetables may be twice the cost of what they are in the shops. This may cause the people after a while to lose desire to cooperate to collectively fund this food production activity, and go back to buying the food from the shops.
Yet the process may be open to individual activity, and market gardeners in an extended community may grow vegetables and fruit and sell them. Each individual grower may get a low wage to start with, yet as production increased in efficiency, the individual activity is helping create more knowledge about production processes of food in the neighbourhood. As the various market gardeners become more efficient, through development of food growing knowledge both within and without the community, and the food becomes cheaper for individual purchasers, the people become more confident to collectively pay one or some market gardeners say $500 a week to grow veges for them. So individual growing and purchasing gives way to collective cooperative funding. And the market gardener has the security of guaranteed job and income for a while, perhaps even if the crops fail, (since the public is now risking the profit or loss, rather than the individual producer).
The Competition Factor
So far this essay has shown how individually funded activity can give way to collectively funded activity. Yet not how competition would occur between the individually funded businesses.
If we talk about a neighbourhood of 100 families perhaps being able to keep a tennis court used, then we could imagine a village of ten neighbourhoods perhaps having half a dozen courts or more. If individuals fund these courts then the price may go a little lower because the court owners are all in competition with each other. Yet in the current capitalist system where there is no chance for the individually funded court to become community cooperatively funded, the prices still tend to stay high.
In the new competition-cooperation relationship I am describing, there is opportunity for an individual owner to sell their court to the community for a profit. This means the price of tennis may be reduced on that court for the new group owners, and influencing the price on the other individually owned courts to be reduced as well, giving a more realistic and ethical competitive profit base.
So the competition aspect is shown when we look beyond the level whereby there is enough people to fund or utilise one facility, say 100 families for a tennis court (or six families for one small swimming pool), and look broader to many of the same type of facilities for say perhaps a suburban sized community. Many of these facilities will be individually owned and competition will occur between the owners. In an aware organised community understanding this competition-cooperation principle the individual competition can give way to collective funding and cooperative activity, while the individually owned competition can spawn new activities.
Profit Projection Limits
The competitive individual profit-making activity occurs while there is not enough awareness for the production activities to be stable, and therefore not enough confidence for the whole community to invest. Once that awareness and stability has been reached and the community knows it is happy to use and fund the activity, competition gives way to cooperation , but only after appropriate individual profit projections have been reached (after Hawkens idea in The Green Economy).
Lets explain that more. If a community can't decide whether to build a particular facility, or how to do a project competitively community funded, then it might throw the activity open to individually funded competition. But if that activity is a success, then in the current situation, the capitalist might make profit 300% higher than the initial investment, profits being individual rather than community. However, once an awareness has developed that the community does want that activity then it can become community owned. But this is not appropriate until the capitalist has made a return on their investment and a profit to warrant the risk. What is an appropriate profit?
Imagine with capitalist activity, the capitalist said, "I am investing $100,000. When I have made $130,000, plus wages, I will give the facility over to community ownership." The people, knowing this, become happy to buy from the business, because the eventual community profits will be used to fund other community activities. This means that profit projections have to be set. The lower the profit projections, the quicker the activity goes over to cooperative public ownership.
People might say that the lower the profit projections, then profit-makers are not going to invest in activity that will allow development to occur. But if it is known to the public that once it goes over to cooperative activity, then the new community profits can actually be put by the public to children's playgrounds, leisure facilities for the community, etc. If it is known that a business is going to go over to cooperative activity and generate all that, then the public will be happy to go and buy those products from the profit-makers and give it over to cooperative activity. They will buy from those profit-making activities and virtually guarantee that it will be a success, as long as the business is efficient and producing quality products at affordable prices. In other words, the lower the profit projection that a capitalist person sets their activity or project before it is handed over to public ownership then the more likely the public is going to support that activity because the quicker their excess funds are returned to themselves as profit.
High profit projections means profit to some individuals, low profit projections means the profits quickly go to everyone. In other words, the lower the profit projection it is not less likely, but more likely, that people will invest, because the public would be more certain to buy their product and support their activity, wanting them to reach their profit projections and have it turned over to community profit. There may be close interplay when all the profit-makers are setting low projections, so it is not a miracle cure for stimulating economy and finding different ways of doing the economic activity.
And More
I will add to this list of examples over time. People who are interested can email me and ask about my rough draft chapter on Cooperation and Competition in my unpublished draft Community Economics booklet.