Comment by Viliam1234

Cooperation is difficult and does not scale well. One selfish person can act selfishly alone. But one cooperative person first needs to find someone else to cooperate with... and the other person also needs to have compatible skills and values... so it is often easier for the cooperative person to just give up, and work to make someone else rich.

And the more difficult project you have, the more extreme this gets. If it is something that most people could do, it is easy for the cooperative people to find each other. It if it something that only one person in a thousand can do, the one-in-a-thousand cooperative person will have a huge problem finding the rest of the team.