If resources are truly scarce, then competition means most players won't survive - whatever resources they manage to hoard for themselves won't be enough for their needs. Cooperation means more will be saved.

(A simple thought experiment: imagine there are 10 equally capable competitors, each needing 2 units of resources to survive, and there are only 10 available globally. Under cooperation, 5 competitors will need to be sacrificed, but 5 will live. Under competition, all 10 will perish, each holding their hard-won single unit of resources.)

If you can figure out how to turn off the part of people’s brains that wants to avoid them being part of the 5 to be sacrificed, you will have created world peace.

Otherwise, this is what peaceful cooperation looks like (I’ll give you this in exchange for that, where obviously the one with more desireable goods or services to trade will survive).

>If you can figure out how to turn off the part of people’s brains that wants to avoid them being part of the 5 to be sacrificed, you will have created world peace.

Most cultures have very strong social mores that sanction against hoarding or even general unwillingness to share. It's not THAT beyond the pale. What makes it hard is when society becomes disconnected enough, and community bonds get weak enough that social mores no longer bind behavior.

Under competition, one or two will survive by killing off the rest.

And from the perspective of the victors, it will be a better result, because winning guaranteed survival, whereas cooperation is essentially a lottery. So anybody who has a better chances to win a conflict than a lottery would choose conflict, if they are deciding solely on utilitarian rather than ethical grounds.