Dear list members - concerning the second question:

The "conundrum," it seems to me, goes back to the deeply ingrained habit of juxtaposing economic "competition" and "cooperation":
the former to be morally condemned as a form of strife, and the latter to be lauded as a form of harmony in human affairs.

The dichotomy overlooks that

(i) cooperation obviously is not necessarily a good thing;
(ii) more significantly, people may cooperate without deliberately setting out to do so.
     This is what generally happens when commodities are produced under competitive (rivalrous) market conditions.

That is to say, competitive cooperation is not a contradiction in terms, that is collaborating without consciously participating in some
comprehensive plan. To be sure, there is a deliberate cooperation within firms and between firms, but 
in a competitive economy firms are not cooperating to execute a plan agreed between them all or imposed upon them. 

In this sense competition is opposed not to cooperation but to monopoly, i.e. agreements between firms for limiting or eliminating competition.

See H(arry) B. Acton, The Morals of Markets: An Ethical Exploration (London 1971).


Stephan Boehm
Dept of Economics
University of Graz, Austria


 
On 21.11.2012, at 20:37, Bruce Caldwell wrote:

> Dear SHOE list:
> 
> I got the following 2 questions from Paul Rubin. Any takers?
> Question:  When was "competition" first used in economics.  Harder 
> question: Why is the economy called "competitive" when it is actually 
> cooperative?
> Please answer to the list, and I'll forward the consensus answers (if 
> they emerge) to him.
> Bruce Caldwell