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Co-operation refers to the practice
of people or greater entities working in common with commonly agreed-upon
goals and possibly methods, instead of working separately in competition.
Cooperation is the antithesis of
competition, however, the need or desire to compete with others is a very
common impetus that motivates individuals to organize into a group and
cooperate with each other in order to form a stronger competitive force.
Co-operation in many areas such as,
farming and housing may be in the form of a co-operative or, alternately, in
the form of a conventional business.
Many people support cooperation as
the ideal form of management of human affairs.
In terms of individuals obtaining
goods and services, rather than resorting to theft or confiscation, they may
cooperate by trading with each other or by altruistic sharing.
Certain forms of co-operation are
illegal in some jurisdictions because they alter the nature of access by
others to economic or other resources.
Thus, co-operation in the form of
cartels or price-fixing may be illegal.
Even if all members of a group would
benefit if all cooperate, individual self-interest may not favor
cooperation.
The prisoner's dilemma codifies this
problem and has been the subject of much research, both theoretical and
experimental.
Results from experimental economics
show that humans often act more cooperatively than strict self-interest
would seem to dictate.
One reason for this may be that if
the prisoner's dilemma situation is repeated (see iterated prisoner's
dilemma), it allows non-cooperation to be punished more, and cooperation to
be rewarded more, than the single-shot version of the problem would suggest.
It has been suggested that this is
one reason for the evolution of complex emotional and social behavior in
higher animals.
There are four main conditions that
tend to be necessary for co-operative behaviour to develop between two
individuals:
1) An overlap in desires
2) A chance of future encounters with
the same individual
3) Memory of past encounters with that
individual
4) A value associated with future
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