Which is the key to prosperity, competition or cooperation?

Answer 1

Competition almost always lowers profit. where as cooperation with you competition will allow for higher prices and more profit, do the math and you will see that while cooperation will make you more money, it takes more money from the consumer. and lowers Prosperity for the masses.

Answer 2

Competition is one key to prosperity. Other keys are strong individual rights and freedoms, strong property rights and a system to ensure that everyone has these rights. Otherwise, we go back to the feudal days where the guys with the biggest firepower win and the rest of us are their serfs.

Competition is the most effective way to bring about sustainable advancement. It harnesses the principle of "necessity is the mother of invention" to bring about innovation. You can look around society and see that where there is competition there is advancement and where there is not competition not much has changed.

For example, automobiles, computers and phone service are very competitive industries. In each industry, a great deal of advancement has been made in the last 30 years. If you don't believe me, rent the movie Wall Street and check out the phone Gordon Gecko uses.

In K-12 education there isn't a lot of competition. It's more or less a monopoly. And, while some of the buildings are nicer than they were 30 years ago, test scores haven't changed in the same time frame while inflation-adjusted education spending has doubled. Not a good result.

Answer 3

The key to prosperity is competition. Our American economic system is based on competition and to a certain extent, survival of the fittest.

Cooperation has its place and is at times necessary, but cooperation as an end promotes complacency and lack of initiative. Socialistic societies often have cooperation as a common denominator for the ordinary man while the most wise rise to the top. The oligarchy of Soviet Russia is but an example. Prosperity in Soviet Russia came to those who competed for political power.

Today, may liberal ideologist will tell you that cooperation is a key element of prosperity, but that's because liberal politics thrive when society is a weak and needy society. I assure you however that American prosperity had its genesis in competition and only through competition will be be able to do more that what is expected.

TX Guy

Answer 4

Both, in a way.

It's a competition between the most successful systems of cooperation. The best cooperative system survives and is propagated.

Even in the so-called "competitive" system of the market, companies are formed to enable cooperation between individual employees. The companies with the best employee cooperation will out-compete the other companies.

Political systems and moral systems that best enable cooperation between their participants are the systems that grow in population and are passed on to later generations. If a system results in too much competition-driven strife, civil war, hatred, etc, it is a system that is less likely to survive and be passed on. Instead of competing over control of scarce resources, most modern civilizations have learned to cooperate and make more out of the same resources.

Answer 5

You need cooperation to maintain positive externalities and minimize negative ones. Cooperation allows collective action, in case everyone has forgotten, this is how we accomplish things like education, national defense, emergency contingencies, large infrastructure projects such as interstate highways and the such.
Would companies work if they were not networks of cooperation? No.
I think it is easy to think that the opposite of cooperation is competition-it isn't The opposite is conflict.
Competition is a completely different dimension, and it serves the purpose of prioritizing resources according to ability to create value. At least it does ideally.

On a national level, you need both.
On an organizational level: you must have cooperation, but you may employ competition to reward or incent your subordinates to achieve you ends.

Answer 6

Global Co operation is the key.. This is to what i think ...
The economy of every country is being strongly influenced by two major and rapidly evolving forces.^One is the global nature of economic competitiveness and the second is the strong degree to which this Competitiveness depends upon technology.^It is possible that this increasing global economic competitiveness could clash with the strong tradition of global cooperation in science; yet we need to strengthen global scientific cooperation.The increasing complexity and costs of research and development, the rapid pace at which it is evolving and the extraordinary promise for creating better living conditions rests upon increasing cooperation.^It is the purpose of my talk to examine these two forces---the increasing competitiveness in economic goods and the compelling need for increasing global cooperation in scientific undertakings.

Answer 7

Cooperation. In fact, so called "competition" in the marketplace is only a way to actually cooperate between businesses to give cheaper, better, faster services to the community. :)

Answer 8

Competition can be cooperation if the financial system is not based on "usury".

First step, would be to eliminate the criminal Federal Reserve.

Please review my Q&A profile (see link below) and you will find sources for this Answer, in the other questions I have asked and answered (find them in my profile):

http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt=AuQG_2kWS7N_LYDn0BqHaMbsy6IX?show=49f0fe14b2785ae4fe1a1d2235fbdd4caa&preview=true

Answer 9

cooptetition

the mix of cooperation and competition

lots of companies cooperate in these days with their competitors. Customers want it and that drives it

Answer 10

The "key" itself will unlock both doors.