consumer co ops are broken because you can pay to get in. any bad actor whos rich enough can get thousands of people to join and vote in a corrupt way. and if you make it invite only you defeat the whole point.

imo the best way to fix is with a hybrid model where consumers pay member fees to get discounts but decision making is down to workers, basically how it was before shareholder supremacy.

I think IRL co-ops can be more resistant to this, because talking to people in person tends to smooth things over (and highlight bad actors). It’s much harder to have calm disagreements over the internet. But this kind of stuff still happens with IRL co-ops on occasion, they can get nasty especially when money is involved.

How is this a failure mode? Sounds like a good idea to me to let the members decide who they want in the club. Just wish this could also be done for national borders.