The-Morality-of-Capitalism-PDF

Competition and CooperationBy David BoazIn this essay, think tank executive and pundit David Boaz showsthe relationship between competition and cooperation, which areoften presented as stark alternatives: a society is organized accordingto one principle or the other. To the contrary, as Boaz explains,in capitalist economic orders people compete in order to cooperatewith others.David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Instituteand an advisor to Students For Liberty. He is the author ofLibertarianism: A Primer and editor of fifteen other books, includingThe Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writingsfrom Lao Tzu to Milton Friedman. He has written for newspaperssuch as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and theWashington Post, is a frequent commentator on television andradio, and blogs regularly for Cato@Liberty, The Guardian, TheAustralian, and the Encyclopedia Britannica.Defenders of the market process often stress the benefits of competition.The competitive process allows for constant testing,experimenting, and adapting in response to changing situations.It keeps businesses constantly on their toes to serve consumers.Both analytically and empirically, we can see that competitivesystems produce better results than centralized or monopolysystems. That’s why, in books, newspaper articles, and televisionappearances, advocates of free markets stress the importance of thecompetitive marketplace and oppose restrictions on competition.But too many people listen to the praise for competition andhear words like hostile, cutthroat, or dog-eat-dog. They wonderwhether cooperation wouldn’t be better than such an antagonisticposture toward the world. Billionaire investor George Soros, forinstance, writes in the Atlantic Monthly, “Too much competitionand too little cooperation can cause intolerable inequities andinstability.” He goes on to say that his “main point . . . is that31