Balanced wealth creation across cooperative economics

Abstract

Cooperation is a necessary condition, along with competition, for the creation of wealth, innovation and knowledge. We briefly re-visit and critique certain neo-classical arguments in regards to pure competition and profit maximization that continue to be carried forward by current neo-liberal thought. We also attempt to illustrate the unbalanced and damaging outcomes of neo-liberal logic across the lens of enactment; as well as across our own discernment of holographic analogies to the individualism–collectivism dyad that exist within our complex environments. Within the spirit of evolutionary economics and complexity theory, early and more recent theoretical and empirical underpinnings for cooperation are presented, with the argument that it, combined with competition, leads to more well-balanced wealth creation—be it regional, national or global in character. Finally, we review competitive vs cooperative economic approaches across the lens of emergent complex systems. We then present two possible ‘future’ scenarios: one extreme outcome occurring as a result of truncating or de-balancing the individual vs collective dyad and its holographic analogies; while another outcome attempts to integrate a more inherent balance within these same dyads.