I knew Lou Kelso, the inventor of the ESOP (employee share ownership plan) that is the modern tax based version of employee owned coops.
Lou was a San Francisco lawyer who wore a Harvard 1940’s style bow tie (not actually from Harvard) all the time. The ESOP was originally an idealistic model like your neighborhood food coop, that became part of tax law in the early 1970s and Lou formed a company to help corporations give their stock to employees as a temporary loan and then borrow the money for them so the employees could pay back the loan and own the stock.
The plan was so successful that the Kelso firm is one of the top modern equity finance firms.
Only trouble is that it is worthless to employees who never get any meaningful say in corporate management, (as if employees were really capable of managing a modern company or wanted to), and often lose part of their retirement funds as the ESOP tanks.
Worst of all, the ESOP has become a favorite way to inflate the value of a failing company so it can be sold for much more than it is worth.
So much for idealism. Many losers have idealism and Lou Kelso to thank. (check stories about Sam Zell and ESOPs)
In my experience this is a common relationship between idealism and the real world.