Cooperation quotient

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The cooperation quotient is the degree to which human activities reflect cooperation or competition. War for instance (although profitable for a few) is a violent, destructive, wasteful and massively non cooperative endeavor which causes numerous negative side effects.

Cooperation is typically identifyied by giving or sharing whereas noncooperation or competition is typically an act of taking or forcing.

The internet protocols such as http and html are examples of global cooperation in choosing and Sharing a common lingua franca to exchange ideas. Democracy is another example of people agreeing to work togeather (or cooperating to compete) rather than letting a power singularity take hold.

Methods of negotiation, voting and other common ground solutions are seen as increacing the Cooperation Quotient in which humanity reeps gains in less strife, greater peace, productivity and order.

It is suprisingly dificult to quantify cooperativeness and competativeness in human endeavor. However cooperation seems to universally ameliorate problems whereas competition typically causes them.

There are contradictions as well. For instance free enterprise with its profit motive has complicated the development of the internet because companies exercise non-cooperative business strategies to get customers to look at their website or channel users to a particular software product rather than allowing a more universal approach. The development of numerous redundant formats can be seen as adding to richness of the software environment even as the competition to produce profitable products causes users to have to choose between formats and ultimatly can cause compatability problems until a new Cooperative method is found to bridge the problems caused by competition.

The merger of services on the internet and the creation of new forums for cooperation remains a promising area for development.

Communication is generally considered a cooperative process because it is based on shared protocol for exchange of ideas. However the things communicated may be another story. Conflict typically arrises from a root of non-cooperation.