Cooperation: A tool; neither evil, nor sacred.

'Coordination of resources' is what I mean here. It is virtually meaningless to me, if a group says they will work together, or vote to do something, but there will be no commitment of resources. I believe the primary benefit of "working together" can be viewed in terms of economy of scale-like benefits. When someone says "the whole is larger than the sum of the parts", I just interpret this opinion or observation as a result of simply eliminating the inefficiencies of 'doing our own thing, separately'. Despite strongly valuing a full transition to electronic information storage/transfer, I always seem to refer to a "stapler" example. If two small companies merge, they can hypothetically share a stapler, rather than buy two separate ones. Because many resources are not continually used, by everyone, all the time, they can be shared.
So . . . cooperation . . . To me, it is powerful tool, rather than a moral view. It is a focus of energy, that can more rapidly affect change. It increases power. Power, in the physics sense, can be expressed as a rate of transfer (application) of energy. When you coordinate efforts, you can more quickly/efficiently direct energy towards a problem. -increase work on that problem. It seems that cooperation, itself, is both demonized, as well as lauded as a universal good. It depends whether or not you approve of how this concentration of resources is applied. If you disagree, or feel victimized by this, you might use the terms "monopoly", "bully", "evil corporation", etc., etc. If you are in agreement of how this tool is applied, you might hear "common good", "labor union", "public (or shareholder) interest", etc., etc. I don't think cooperative constructs (charitable organizations, business groups, governments, unions, etc.) should , themselves, be demonized or considered sacred. They shouldn't take on a life of their own, in a way that they tend to perpetuate themselves, regardless of their relevance to a particular problem they were initially intending solve. It is important to be conscious of the fact that cooperation is always applied to, or against, something. Humans are, by nature, social beings. We tend to coordinate into groups: cities, communities, etc. When we work together with our own species, we can end up working against other species, or the earth's ecosystem. i.e. global warming, overpopulation, extinction, etc.
I don't think cooperation should be mystified or demonized. It is a tool, with limitation. It should be used for outcomes most of us (aka "democracy") agree on. We shouldn't expect anything "higher" from it, and we shouldn't necessarily perpetuate a certain cooperative system, in full-force, if it's costs become higher than it's benefits.