alt Hacker NewsYou’ve described a corporation. Think of YC companies - equity owned by early employees. Controlled by “someone senior”. And if things are going good more friends are invited to join in, multiple companies start owning equity within each other and you back new incomers by directing demand towards their products. The difference between that and a coop is that in a corporation there is some legal standing to enforce the rules and control abuse. In eastern europe where coops had more of a presence the people in power would just abuse the coops - theft, misdirection of resources towards “friends”, pyramid schemes benefiting “older members”… but you couldn’t go and sue as a shareholder because via political connections the entrenched leader and his buddies could use their power to pay off someone and hurt you. The real prof in concepts like this are enforceable contracts.
Eh, I think this is where it's important to distinguish between different types of corporation. The very point of going through YC is to trade ownership and control for external capital: the capital ends up in control of the business. Other types of corp other than "limited liability with shares" are possible.
However the article describes something even looser. It's more like the opposite of a boycott, a loose buyer's group focusing on directing spending towards something positive rather than away from something negative.
> the people in power would just abuse the coops - theft, misdirection of resources towards “friends”
The US has recently seen a sharp uptick of this kind of thing, under the cover of law.