Eco is first and foremost a multiplayer game. If the default setting of No Collaboration is not towards your playstyle (they work for most people and we unfortunately can't provide defaults that work for everyone, as those don't exist), you can adjust those. When creating a world ingame, by choosing custom (later via file edits, we plan to make this better) you can set multiplicators for resource costs, crafting time, time needed to get a new star, time to level up a specialty and a few other options which should allow you to make the game as much or little of grind you want it.
Also: I see lots of collaboration (which does include competition in captialistic society systems, though) on the official servers. More so on Tiger of course, but that's pretty much what its for.