> where in nature, life forms mostly cooperate within their species (or at least ignore each other)
This is blatantly not true. There are condiserable levels of intra-species competition in many species. Even in "cooperative" species, those animals cooperate in groups, but then those groups compete against each other. Most predators prey on a very limited subset of the ecology. You seemly cannot reliably predict inter vs intra species like you seem to think.
Also "preying on" is pretty different that "competeing with" and at the ecological scale, predation looks much more like interactions between industries than competition within an industry.
Thus the correct mapping of the analogy in this case is between ecological niches and industries.
Regarding your more general note: I think there is a trade off between efficiency and robustness. Top down heirachical structures (most companies, militaries, etc) are generally more efficient in terms of resources used but are vulnerable to broken/inefficient/disengenous nodes, especially for the higher nodes. Bottom up solutions (markets, grassroots movements, etc) tend to use more total resources but do better at dealing with bad nodes and are thus less failure prone.
I would argue that the best systems tend to layer combinations of these two types of systems.
Edit: In the US for example, we (simplistically) have a bottom up democracy that governs a top down government that regulates bottom up markets that are participated in by top down companies that increasingly rely on outsourcing core functionality to other bottom up markets that that top down particpants.
This is blatantly not true. There are condiserable levels of intra-species competition in many species. Even in "cooperative" species, those animals cooperate in groups, but then those groups compete against each other. Most predators prey on a very limited subset of the ecology. You seemly cannot reliably predict inter vs intra species like you seem to think.
Also "preying on" is pretty different that "competeing with" and at the ecological scale, predation looks much more like interactions between industries than competition within an industry.
Thus the correct mapping of the analogy in this case is between ecological niches and industries.
Regarding your more general note: I think there is a trade off between efficiency and robustness. Top down heirachical structures (most companies, militaries, etc) are generally more efficient in terms of resources used but are vulnerable to broken/inefficient/disengenous nodes, especially for the higher nodes. Bottom up solutions (markets, grassroots movements, etc) tend to use more total resources but do better at dealing with bad nodes and are thus less failure prone.
I would argue that the best systems tend to layer combinations of these two types of systems.
Edit: In the US for example, we (simplistically) have a bottom up democracy that governs a top down government that regulates bottom up markets that are participated in by top down companies that increasingly rely on outsourcing core functionality to other bottom up markets that that top down particpants.