Society: A collective effort or a competition?

[Temujin]

Well I got the following PM from Carinthium referencing one of my posts in this thread: Social Benefit of Limiting or Transferring Civil Liability

As for why this happens; well in America we have this ridiculous notion that society is more of a competition and not a collective effort to make life better for everyone, which of course is put forward and supported by the usual suspects.

I haven't heard the idea that society is a collective effort for improvement before- how do you justify it?

I thought it might make a good thread topic.

So, is the point of society a collective effort to make life better for everyone, or is it just the law of the jungle? Mind you we are discussing the point of society, not whether it works entirely this way in practice, as we of course know it doesn't.


Obviously, my answer is that the basic purpose of society is and always has been for individuals to work together for the greater benefit of all, and thus achieve more than they could individually.

Humans, being descended from primates, started out living in small tribes, bonded by blood relations, and working collectively to benefit the whole. As man evolved, the nature of these tribes became more complex, often expanding into larger clans due to the assimilation of smaller groups and individuals, who would in turn intermarry within the group, and themselves become bonded by blood. (Kept getting an Exodus vibe writing that )

Originally, these clans’ relatively non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures were held together by a kind of moral sovereignty*. However, as successful clans grew and transitioned into the first proto-city-states, moral sovereignty was gradually replaced more and more by legal sovereignty, as individual humans could no longer truly know everyone in the tribe, making many people destined to remain strangers. Hence, since “family ties” alone would not be strong enough to help keep the peace and hold the fledgling society together, written laws and a means to enforce those laws would.

As city-states grew into nations and even into empires, increasingly complex legal sovereignty was developed and applied to keep said political entities together, yet the basic idea of society’s collective effort to benefit everyone remained, even if it wasn’t always so obvious.

Granted, this was often an ugly process, with many people being repressed, taken advantage of for the betterment of others, or worse. However, as society overall has grown more enlightened and progressive, many of these wrongs have been curtailed, if not eliminated outright; at least in some parts of the world. Granted, we still have a long way to go as the natural selfish drives and fear of strangers (and the unknown) that helped our species survive are still very much present and predominant in our psychological makeup.

As for a justification, I think it goes without saying that the greater the degree that we work together, the stronger we are, the more we accomplish, and the more we benefit individually.


The Conservatives and Randroid libertarians (the usual suspects) are the ones most opposed to the idea of society as a collective effort, instead favoring the idea that society is a competition, and that the law of the jungle mentality is in full effect, enabling the worst aspects of capitalism to be fully realized. Free from responsibility, people are free to take advantage of other people by legally scamming and robbing them, turning them into wage slaves, and even on a personal level getting to play out their twisted authoritarian fantasies when they are “The Boss”; using the not so subtle threat of having the power of depriving a person of their livelihood least they offend “The Boss”.

Of course, the invisible hand will make everything all right, even though it doesn’t. And when tied to a sick Protestant notion of being deserving or undeserving of success, if you fail or suffer, well that’s just the dark side of capitalism; sucks to be you.

As long as they are comfortable and/or in control, they don’t care about anyone but their tribalistic peer group. Of course, when their life is not comfortable or they are not on top, they are the first ones looking for and whining about needing assistance.


So what sayeth the board?


*This term is from my college "Introduction to Political Theory" class, and was used to describe the early pre-rule of law type of sovereignty (or legal sovereignty) that existed in hunter gather, nomadic and early settlement societies. Though often used in a religious sense, in my class it was used more to describe the kind of natural stability and control that occurred in groups composed mainly of extended families as opposed to codified law found in more complex societies.

[Eulogy]

This should be in the Coliseum.

Society is defined by a collective effort; if everyone looked out for number one there wouldn't be any civilization. Even the barbarians had rules they had to follow.

[Temujin]

I was actually surprised to find Carinthium's PM in my box this morning, as I hadn't seen a post from him yet. Then I saw News and Politics, and figured him for another clueless conservative, trying not to sound like a conservative.

I've seen elements of this argument in debates about libertarianism before. I believe it was Mike who originally raised this point years ago.

[Carinthium]

Humans, being descended from primates, started out living in small tribes, bonded by blood relations, and working collectively to benefit the whole.

Given that intrigue and deceit are human instincts, one can conclude that they existed since primitive times.

Originally, these clans’ relatively non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures were held together by a kind of moral sovereignty*. However, as successful clans grew and transitioned into the first proto-city-states, moral sovereignty was gradually replaced more and more by legal sovereignty, as individual humans could no longer truly know everyone in the tribe, making many people destined to remain strangers. Hence, since “family ties” alone would not be strong enough to help keep the peace and hold the fledgling society together, written laws and a means to enforce those laws would.

There is such a thing as traditional Aboriginal law, traditional Native American law, and so on. "Moral sovereignty" by your definition may well have had a great role in ancient times, but "legal sovereignty" (by your definition) existed as well.

As for a justification, I think it goes without saying that the greater the degree that we work together, the stronger we are, the more we accomplish, and the more we benefit individually.

Given human nature in practice, at the minimum incentives of some sort need to exist for people to work hard or else they won't. Also, social conformity means that at times working together can be stifiling (when it means that a false set of beliefs is taught as dogma). Finally, there are plenty of times when the group benefits at the expense of an individual (e.g.- evicting people from their house to build a road) or an individual can gain more from a competitive then a cooperative society (e.g.- an able individual likely to make his fortune in a competitive society faced with a cooperative society).

There is also the counter-argument (at least for cooperative society as a worldwide model, making the commonly accepted moral assumptions)- how just is it to force people to cooperate with the whole without their prior consent? Shouldn't some competitive societies exist for the sake of people having a choice?

The Conservatives and Randroid libertarians (the usual suspects) are the ones most opposed to the idea of society as a collective effort, instead favoring the idea that society is a competition, and that the law of the jungle mentality is in full effect, enabling the worst aspects of capitalism to be fully realized.

Significant numbers of conservatives are in favor of government intervention on matters of morality (as said individuals would define it) and almost all would be in favor of some sort of small government. Most also support some ideal of family values.

Free from responsibility, people are free to take advantage of other people by legally scamming and robbing them, turning them into wage slaves, and even on a personal level getting to play out their twisted authoritarian fantasies when they are “The Boss”; using the not so subtle threat of having the power of depriving a person of their livelihood least they offend “The Boss”.

1- Such scams exist in such a society, I agree.
2- Wage slavery is not as bad as actual slavery, at least
3- What makes such fantasies twisted? They are at the minimum based on primal human nature.

Of course, the invisible hand will make everything all right, even though it doesn’t. And when tied to a sick Protestant notion of being deserving or undeserving of success, if you fail or suffer, well that’s just the dark side of capitalism; sucks to be you.

Won't contest any of this, although at the very least the invisible hand is very good for G.D.P and quite good for per capita G.D.P.

As long as they are comfortable and/or in control, they don’t care about anyone but their tribalistic peer group. Of course, when their life is not comfortable or they are not on top, they are the first ones looking for and whining about needing assistance.

Won't contest the factual claims here either being true (in general), there are two defences. One- pragmatically some sort of bailout (although not necessarily the one that took place) was a good idea. Two- that is not an attack on a hypothetical genuine competitive society (such a society would involve people having to "sink or swim" on their own merits. It could be attacked as unrealistic, but so could a purely cooperative society).

[adam_grif]

Since you let me tick both options at the same time, I did.

Society has both of these things. It is obviously a collective of people, although I don't think anybody really got together and said "let's all live together to improve everybody's lives!" History is full to the brim with examples of societies conquering other societies and enslaving them, raping, pillaging etc. Concepts like universal human rights are relatively recent inventions. Even within individual societies, politicians wrestle with each other for power and control, so although they're no-longer raising armies to fight each other, the element of struggle is as prevalent as it possibly could be given the legal system.

A better question would be "what ought society to be?"

[Carinthium]

What are your views on that question anyway?

[Shinova]

I pick both because purpose of all life is to survive and pass their traits onto their offspring. All living things compete one way or another, and humans as well. But humans evolved to create social groups because there is obviously real strength in cooperative numbers, and we form cooperative groups and need fellow company in order to survive as individuals and as a species.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Society is both a collective effort, and a competition.

Pardon me, but I am going to blatantly plagiarize myself.

Social groups are characterized by a sort of internal tension. Ecological pressures force cooperation between individuals, otherwise social groups can never form

Over time, in competition between other groups, the group that cooperates best is the one more likely to survive. However evolution is not forward looking like this.

The individual wants to maximize their own fitness, sometimes this occurs through cooperation. If I help another person gather food, I get more food. However sometimes it involves fucking over others. By way of example: If I can take advantage of everyone else cooperating to collect food without having to contribute myself, I should. In an evolutionary sense. Those that do this best will be more likely to pass on their genes than someone else because they reap the benefit of society without paying the cost. (Snark: If you want a good example of people like this look at republicans and certain types of libertarian.)

As a result, every individual wants everyone else to cooperate with them under all conditions, and under certain conditions they want to cooperate, but under others, to cheat. Other individuals want to avoid being cheated under all conditions. As a result social policing mechanisms evolve and have evolved in every social species. This interaction exists even in the social insects.

In the individual they evolve in order to facilitate the enforcement of cooperation with them (to avoid being cheated, and to punish cheaters). This is probably why empathy evolved. Afterall, being able to empathize makes one more able to anticipate another's needs and more likely to respond in a prosocial way. It also has the benefit of allowing a person to project when cheating may be profitable and when it is not (to determine the risk of being caught and punished, and calculating the benefit. If the ratio is less than 1, risk cheating).

In the case of anti-cheating behavior, individuals will actually take enormous costs to prevent cheating (born out by experiments in game theory using humans and other social mammals like chimps), or to punish it.

This leads to the evolution of societies. Groups of individuals interacting who have specialists-subsidized at public expense-to define acts of social cheating and work to prevent it through enactment of policy, and other individuals who specialize in catching and punishing social cheating.

Thus, society is both

[Lord of the Abyss]

Another vote for both. Without the drive to work together for the general benefit of society, that society would rip itself apart as everyone tried to prey upon everyone else. Working together and showing some consideration for each other is in the self interest of most people.

But without individual striving and the desire for personal profit, there'd be no initiative, and in the end everyone would sacrifice for the good of the tribe/nation/society but receive nothing in return for it. The only reason social groups are valuable in the first place is because they benefit the individuals they are composed of; a group that destroys or enslaves the people it's made of has become parasitic.

[K. A. Pital]

Competition is apish games. When humans shall dispense with apish instincts and build a society governed by pure reason (which will happen, sooner or later), competition will fall. Competition is meaningless when resources are infinite; and to a certain degree, humans will achieve a safety net strong enough to make basic needs of every human fulfilled. At that point, cooperation will rule the day.

[Temujin]

I reply in detail later (got to run to work - where i do nothing and thus write up my reply ).

For those clicking both:

First, that was a mistake on my part setting up the poll.

Second, perhaps i should have bolded this part: Mind you we are discussing the point of society, not whether it works entirely this way in practice, as we of course know it doesn't. Looking at it from a strictly scientific viewpoint, if left up to nature evolutionary pressures of course it is going to be both.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Competition is apish games. When humans shall dispense with apish instincts and build a society governed by pure reason (which will happen, sooner or later), competition will fall.

I don't think such beings would qualify as human, considering how much you'd need to re-engineer the brain to pull that off.

There's also the question of what the point is of doing so; without those apish instincts, then what reason do we have to do anything?

[Carinthium]

I reply in detail later (got to run to work - where i do nothing and thus write up my reply ).

For those clicking both:

First, that was a mistake on my part setting up the poll.

Second, perhaps i should have bolded this part: Mind you we are discussing the point of society, not whether it works entirely this way in practice, as we of course know it doesn't. Looking at it from a strictly scientific viewpoint, if left up to nature evolutionary pressures of course it is going to be both.

Didn't you make the claim that society "is" a cooperative effort?

[K. A. Pital]

Humans don't need to dispense with instincts entirely by re-engineering the brain. Change the habitat and the instinct weakens over time. It happened with other species. Humans are NO different.

Make the habitat a one where basic needs are fully provided (and by that I mean provided on a far greater level than today), and humans will naturally depress useless instincts that used to drive competition.

[Kane Starkiller]

What are basic needs? If basic needs are defined as what a human requires to survive than that is shelter, food and a source of water. Everything else is want. And that will always produce competition, it's the result of billion years of evolution it won't vanish anytime soon.

[Kane Starkiller]

Competition is apish games. When humans shall dispense with apish instincts and build a society governed by pure reason (which will happen, sooner or later), competition will fall.

There seemed to be plenty of competition when I applied to the university and later every time I took an exam up until I graduated. Accepting people based on knowledge they showed during high school and entrance exam and later hiring people which managed to graduate seemed driven by pure reason to me.
When people were caught "cooperating" during an exam it was usually called cheating and people in question failed the exam if they were lucky. Again this seemed perfectly fair and reasonable to me.

[Lusankya]

Cheating isn't cooperative behaviour though: it's competitive, as you are trying to artificially inflate your worth as perceived by others. If people were truly cooperating, then they would be making sure that larger society could get an accurate assessment of their true abilities, thus allowing society to utilise their skills more effectively. I.e. they would sit the exam honestly.

[Werrf]

I think my personal answer would have to be that society is a cooperative venture, which in its ideal form should encourage the best outcome for as many as possible through carefully controlled competition.

My philosophy, such as it is, is that humans have two key flaws that any society has to address. People are greedy, and people are lazy. We want to get as much as we can, and we want to get it with as little effort as possible. Both these traits made very sound evolutionary sense while we were still hunter-gatherers, encouraging us to stock up as much as possible while things were good, and to do it without spending precious resources, so those who were greedy and lazy survived. They don't make sense now, though - we're in the middle of plenty, but we have to work to keep it, so those who are greedy end up taking way too much and those who are lazy end up as drains on society - and that's what society needs to combat.

Capitalism does a great job of combating laziness, since you can't be too lazy in a capitalist society and still get by. But capitalism is crap at controlling greed - it encourages it instead, and results in people and companies using up insane amounts of resources and claiming they deserve it because they're that good at living in a capitalist society.

Communism...okay, communism actually does a crap job of controlling both greed AND laziness, but it's trying

So, my idea of an idea society would be one that works cooperatively to improve the good of everyone in it, through controlled and regulated competition.

As always, IMO.

[Temujin]

I reply in detail later (got to run to work - where i do nothing and thus write up my reply ).

For those clicking both:

First, that was a mistake on my part setting up the poll.

Second, perhaps i should have bolded this part: Mind you we are discussing the point of society, not whether it works entirely this way in practice, as we of course know it doesn't. Looking at it from a strictly scientific viewpoint, if left up to nature evolutionary pressures of course it is going to be both.

Didn't you make the claim that society "is" a cooperative effort?

Actually in my original statement I said: "Is more of a competition". It's possible I could have made that clearer in the OP based on some of the responses.

[Temujin]

Humans, being descended from primates, started out living in small tribes, bonded by blood relations, and working collectively to benefit the whole.

Given that intrigue and deceit are human instincts, one can conclude that they existed since primitive times.

Obviously they did, but it certainly would have been disproportionately directed more at outsiders than within the group.

Originally, these clans’ relatively non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures were held together by a kind of moral sovereignty*. However, as successful clans grew and transitioned into the first proto-city-states, moral sovereignty was gradually replaced more and more by legal sovereignty, as individual humans could no longer truly know everyone in the tribe, making many people destined to remain strangers. Hence, since “family ties” alone would not be strong enough to help keep the peace and hold the fledgling society together, written laws and a means to enforce those laws would.

There is such a thing as traditional Aboriginal law, traditional Native American law, and so on. "Moral sovereignty" by your definition may well have had a great role in ancient times, but "legal sovereignty" (by your definition) existed as well.

And I clearly point out that the transition was gradual; there was no flipping of the switch moment where one replaced the other. However, there was obviously a point when no codified law existed, then gradually aspects of it were introduced until it all but replaced moral sovereignty; and I say all but replaced because some elements of still in the interaction of small groups like family units.

As for a justification, I think it goes without saying that the greater the degree that we work together, the stronger we are, the more we accomplish, and the more we benefit individually.

Given human nature in practice, at the minimum incentives of some sort need to exist for people to work hard or else they won't.

People will always want something better, and will be willing to work to get it; contrary to the idea that welfare receipts and the unemployed are just lazy bums who want to sit around and get a handout.

Also, social conformity means that at times working together can be stifiling (when it means that a false set of beliefs is taught as dogma).

Yes, I can’t think of anything more stifling than working for Christian Conservative Libertarians who hypocritically push their bullshit dogma down your throat while hiding behind their own authority. Unfortunately, I currently do.

Finally, there are plenty of times when the group benefits at the expense of an individual (e.g.- evicting people from their house to build a road) or an individual can gain more from a competitive then a cooperative society (e.g.- an able individual likely to make his fortune in a competitive society faced with a cooperative society).

Regarding the first example, yes there are times when this must happen. However, how it is handled is the key. All too often people are under compensated for the disruption this causes in their lives. As for the second, as I’ve already pointed out, the situation is not black and white. There will always be opportunities for individuals to make money. It doesn’t mean that they have the right to crash the economy and ruin peoples’ lives like Wall Street did.

There is also the counter-argument (at least for cooperative society as a worldwide model, making the commonly accepted moral assumptions)- how just is it to force people to cooperate with the whole without their prior consent? Shouldn't some competitive societies exist for the sake of people having a choice?

So we should ask every person after a certain age if they want to be part of society, and perhaps even have two societies, one cooperative and one competitive. As I’ve already pointed out, the problem with that argument and the people who make it is that they want all the benefits of society with minimal cost and responsibility, and often times because they don’t want their pooled resources going to help people they don’t like. Yet they don’t seem to have a problem taking those people’s money for things they favor.

The Conservatives and Randroid libertarians (the usual suspects) are the ones most opposed to the idea of society as a collective effort, instead favoring the idea that society is a competition, and that the law of the jungle mentality is in full effect, enabling the worst aspects of capitalism to be fully realized.

Significant numbers of conservatives are in favor of government intervention on matters of morality (as said individuals would define it) and almost all would be in favor of some sort of small government. Most also support some ideal of family values.

See above! They're fucking hypocrites!

Free from responsibility, people are free to take advantage of other people by legally scamming and robbing them, turning them into wage slaves, and even on a personal level getting to play out their twisted authoritarian fantasies when they are “The Boss”; using the not so subtle threat of having the power of depriving a person of their livelihood least they offend “The Boss”.

1- Such scams exist in such a society, I agree.

Does that mean they should?

2- Wage slavery is not as bad as actual slavery, at least

It’s still fucking slavery! People have little or no options for improving their situation; actually succeeding and getting out of it through hard work and education (if even available to these people) is akin to winning the lottery. Everyone should have a chance at a decent life!

3- What makes such fantasies twisted? They are at the minimum based on primal human nature.

Acting on them does! You can have all the sick fantasies you want; you just don’t act them out with other people without their consent. You don’t make another person’s life a living hell because you can!

Of course, the invisible hand will make everything all right, even though it doesn’t. And when tied to a sick Protestant notion of being deserving or undeserving of success, if you fail or suffer, well that’s just the dark side of capitalism; sucks to be you.

Won't contest any of this, although at the very least the invisible hand is very good for G.D.P and quite good for per capita G.D.P.

No it isn’t. Growth for growths sake, especially when it primarily benefits 1% of the population. Not mention that without a social safety net, when things do go pare shaped, it’s everyone else who gets fucked.

As long as they are comfortable and/or in control, they don’t care about anyone but their tribalistic peer group. Of course, when their life is not comfortable or they are not on top, they are the first ones looking for and whining about needing assistance.

Won't contest the factual claims here either being true (in general), there are two defences. One- pragmatically some sort of bailout (although not necessarily the one that took place) was a good idea.

Bailouts shouldn’t have to happen except in extreme circumstances because a proper social safety net should exist and proper regulation should prevent the kinds of situation that led to the bank bailout from occurring.

Two- that is not an attack on a hypothetical genuine competitive society (such a society would involve people having to "sink or swim" on their own merits. It could be attacked as unrealistic, but so could a purely cooperative society).

A genuine competitive society, in other words an unrealistic Randroid fantasy society. As I pointed out above, all of the people who advocate that shit are hypocrites who believe they’re going to be the ones on top and be successful. The reality is that they’ll be living in a shanty town watching their children be dragged off by wild animals in the night. And saying that they’ll sink or swim by their own merits sounds great, as long as they’re not central to the economy or providing essential services like health care where their fuckup can and will destroy the lives of real people.

[Temujin]

Society has both of these things. It is obviously a collective of people, although I don't think anybody really got together and said "let's all live together to improve everybody's lives!" History is full to the brim with examples of societies conquering other societies and enslaving them, raping, pillaging etc. Concepts like universal human rights are relatively recent inventions. Even within individual societies, politicians wrestle with each other for power and control, so although they're no-longer raising armies to fight each other, the element of struggle is as prevalent as it possibly could be given the legal system.

A better question would be "what ought society to be?"

Your right. And again I should clarify. My original statement was "Is more of a competition", I probably could have made that clearer in the OP.

Alyrium's excellent summarization shows that this is not a simple black and white situation, but I think what I'm trying to get at is the mindset that certain groups of people hold, and how those views obviously effect just how much society actually functions in one way or the other.

As a follow on to that, I have to say I agree with Stas' points. If we have the right mindset towards what society should be, we can then (and are obviously more likely to) create a society that functions to a greater degree along those lines; and eventually baser human behavior will change for the better. After all, we should be striving to uplift ourselves from our limited biological origins.

[Temujin]

There seemed to be plenty of competition when I applied to the university and later every time I took an exam up until I graduated. Accepting people based on knowledge they showed during high school and entrance exam and later hiring people which managed to graduate seemed driven by pure reason to me.

Hiring processes are far from driven by reason. I hear my bosses discuss interviewees all the time, and the sheer degree of petty discriminatory crap that disqualifies some candidates is astounding.

When people were caught "cooperating" during an exam it was usually called cheating and people in question failed the exam if they were lucky. Again this seemed perfectly fair and reasonable to me.

The students should be competing against themselves.

[Kane Starkiller]

Cheating isn't cooperative behaviour though: it's competitive, as you are trying to artificially inflate your worth as perceived by others. If people were truly cooperating, then they would be making sure that larger society could get an accurate assessment of their true abilities, thus allowing society to utilise their skills more effectively. I.e. they would sit the exam honestly.
Cheating isn't cooperative behaviour though: it's competitive, as you are trying to artificially inflate your worth as perceived by others. If people were truly cooperating, then they would be making sure that larger society could get an accurate assessment of their true abilities, thus allowing society to utilise their skills more effectively. I.e. they would sit the exam honestly.

It's cooperative between the people who are cheating. The point is that "cooperation" isn't necessarily better than competition. The issue is whether it is fair.

Hiring processes are far from driven by reason. I hear my bosses discuss interviewees all the time, and the sheer degree of petty discriminatory crap that disqualifies some candidates is astounding.

Many times that is true yes. But the point is that even when they are driven purely by reason and logic competition still comes into play. You try to hire the best person for the job and the applicants know it therefore they will compete.

The students should be competing against themselves.

With Gauss curve grading that won't work too well.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Humans don't need to dispense with instincts entirely by re-engineering the brain. Change the habitat and the instinct weakens over time. It happened with other species. Humans are NO different.

Make the habitat a one where basic needs are fully provided (and by that I mean provided on a far greater level than today), and humans will naturally depress useless instincts that used to drive competition.

Yeah, over hundreds or thousands of generations. And resource needs are not the only ones. Competition over mates is something that just wont go away.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Given human nature in practice, at the minimum incentives of some sort need to exist for people to work hard or else they won't. Also, social conformity means that at times working together can be stifiling (when it means that a false set of beliefs is taught as dogma).

That is the price of religion. You can think of religion as a commensal organism that evolved into a symbiotic organism that then went parasite. It started off as a cognitive accident. A side effect of theory of mind and a hyper-active agency detection system (It is better to have a false positive and detect some sort of living agent behind you when one is not there, than have a false negative and think "it is nothing" when a twig snaps behind you and you get eaten by a leopard). People detected some sort of intelligent cause for natural phenomenon and naturally wanted to appease the nature spirits. Initially this appeasing did not cost much, and the social structures that formed around primitive religions aided humans by giving them rituals that bound the group together and a legitimate means of enforcing social rules. When people did not know how the world worked, and could not, there were no problems. The meme that is religion was symbiotic. It helped them at the same time as it helped itself. Later... well, we know our history.

Finally, there are plenty of times when the group benefits at the expense of an individual (e.g.- evicting people from their house to build a road) or an individual can gain more from a competitive then a cooperative society (e.g.- an able individual likely to make his fortune in a competitive society faced with a cooperative society).

Which is why societies are both competitive and cooperative enterprises.

There is also the counter-argument (at least for cooperative society as a worldwide model, making the commonly accepted moral assumptions)- how just is it to force people to cooperate with the whole without their prior consent? Shouldn't some competitive societies exist for the sake of people having a choice?

To talk about the moral superiority of something that cannot exist is useless. To say something ought to be implies that something can be. A libertarian paradise will ALWAYS either eat itself, or reform into the cooperative-competitive mosaic that I explained in depth. A cooperative society is the same way, only in reverse. See communism.