I’ve known a few in the U.S., and even worked at one. Maybe people won’t become billionaires doing this, but why wait for a complete overhaul of society to implement more of what are good ideas.
I’d also like to see more childcare co-ops, or community shared pre-k schools. Wheres the movement to build communities and pool resources around these business models in the US? In short, co-ops are the closest socialist/communist business model that’s actually implemented in the U.S., so why are more leftists not doing this?
If EU “credit unions”:
…then it seems like that’s the problem
Credit unions are a type of cooperative bank. The key is that anybody who opens a bank account becomes a member automatically. That is not the case for other types of cooperative banks.
What you’re describing is not a cooperative.
The definition of a cooperative is where they’re Democratic and decisions are made collectively by all members.
It sounds to me like what you’re describing is a for profit company
Customer and member are not the same thing. A member owns a share of the business and has a vote, with cooperatives having one vote per member. That makes it different to company stock. For consumer cooperative like credit unions, most customers will own a share in the company, but it is not a requirement. For example when you withdraw money from a credit unions ATM, you are a customer of the credit union, but are not necessarily a member. There also are workers cooperatives, where the workers of the company are the members.
Also cooperatives are meant to benefit their members, which makes them different from charities.