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[William S. Lear]

On Monday, February 22, 1999 at 23:41:58 (+0000) Chris Burford writes:
>...
>The Conference of Socialist Economists (in the UK) last year organised a
>meeting by a speaker who argued convincingly that the internet was an arena
>where the economics of cooperation were more rational than the economics of
>capitalist competition. 

And where is "competition", long ago banished from most of the
economy, ever more "rational" than cooperation?


>The two are finely balanced, but cooperation although slower...

I disagree.  Competition usually produces immense energies spent in
going noplace --- as Dave Noble called it, our society is a dynamic
one which goes nowhere.

The critical issue here is to examine the ways in which competition is
padded with subsidies while cooperation (outside of corporations) is
left to its own devices, often horribly underfunded.  When compared on
equal footing, I think cooperation wins hands down.

Bill