In a November manifesto, Pope Francis attacked the "tyranny of markets." It's the latest iteration of a mounting distaste for free markets. Here in the United States, we have twice elected a president who is attempting to engineer one-sixth of the economy with a centrally controlled mechanism for health insurance, and regulating as many other markets as he and his regulatory minions can. The people of New York City have elected an extreme anti-market candidate as mayor by an overwhelming margin of those who bothered to vote. France chose an outright socialist to be president. The list could go on.

How can we explain this emporiophobia—a fear of markets—given the overwhelming evidence that such institutions provide the greatest wealth, health and happiness for humankind?

Economists like myself deserve a part of the blame: The way we use the term competition instead of cooperation fosters anti-market bias. "Competition" carries a negative connotation because it implies winners and losers, and our minds naturally feel sympathy for the losers. But cooperation evokes a positive response: It's a win-win situation with no losers. And in fact the word competition doesn't depict market activity as aptly as the word cooperation. The "competitive economy" would be better described as the "cooperative economy."

Consider the most basic economic unit, the transaction. A transaction is cooperative because both parties gain from a voluntary exchange. There is competition in markets, but it's actually competition for the right to cooperate. Firms must compete for the privilege of selling to consumers—for the right to cooperate with consumers. Workers compete for the right to cooperate with employers. Competition matters because it ensures that the most efficient players will gain the right to cooperate on the best terms available. But competition plays a supporting role, while cooperation makes markets thrive.

Cooperation isn't just more important in the economic sphere—it's also more common. We cooperate with everyone involved in making all the products we buy and sell, millions of people we'll never know. We compete, on the other hand, with only a few individuals or firms. As economists say, in "pure competition"—a free-market model in which resources can flow to their most valuable use without government or other interference—competition doesn't exist at all. Yet this fact doesn't seem to influence economic writing. In a sample of nine introductory economics textbooks, "competition" is mentioned an average of eight times as often as "cooperation." It's no wonder that competition comes to mind when society thinks of the economy.