There’s countries where cooperative firms are doing fine. Most of Denmark’s supermarket chains are owned by the cooperative coop. Denmark’s largest dairy producer Arla is a cooperative too. Both operate in a free market and are out-competing privately owned competitors.
Both also resort to many of the same dirty tricks traditionally structured firms are pulling. Arla, for example, has done tremendous harm to the plant-based industry through aggressive lobbying. Structuring firms as cooperatives doesn’t magically make them aligned.
Worth noting explicitly, the Danish government is in general much more hands-on in the economy than in most other countries. I don’t know specifically how that manifests itself here, but I expect that’s an important part of it
There’s countries where cooperative firms are doing fine. Most of Denmark’s supermarket chains are owned by the cooperative coop. Denmark’s largest dairy producer Arla is a cooperative too. Both operate in a free market and are out-competing privately owned competitors.
Both also resort to many of the same dirty tricks traditionally structured firms are pulling. Arla, for example, has done tremendous harm to the plant-based industry through aggressive lobbying. Structuring firms as cooperatives doesn’t magically make them aligned.
Note that coop is a consumer cooperative not an employee cooperative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_co-operative
Worth noting explicitly, the Danish government is in general much more hands-on in the economy than in most other countries. I don’t know specifically how that manifests itself here, but I expect that’s an important part of it