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11.23.2004
Markets and Cooperation
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At Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux, the Chairman of George Mason University's econ department, makes the point that markets are an important mechanism by which societies cooperate:
[T]he term "competitive" too often distracts attention from a deeper and more important point about the essence of a market economy. This deeper point is that the market process is one of cooperation. Whenever a firm in the market increases its net worth, it does so by improving its cooperativeness with customers and suppliers. It becomes a better cooperator. It works better, more effectively, with its suppliers. It works better, more effectively, with its customers. The amount of cooperation is extended; the efficacy of cooperation is deepened.
We might truthfully say that profits earned in markets are measures of a firm’s success at cooperating. The better is a firm at cooperating, the higher are its profits. It is an important point for IP. A great defect of much legal thinking on the topic is an underlying assumption that creators and their audience are engaged in a competitive zero-sum game rather than in a cooperative enterprise, and that what one loses the other gains.
For more on the subject, see Boudreaux & McCauley Competition and Cooperation (1996).
posted by James DeLong : 11/23/2004 09:02:02 AM
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