I wonder what that looks like? Which members of the community?
Thoughts?
The members of the community who can afford the $300+ “lifetime membership” fee.
Pass.
We have a co-op in town that opened a couple years ago. All are welcome, members get a discount daily. Military and first responders get a discount once a week. Membership is free. It still has small-town feel, because it’s a small town. It’s mostly good-quality items, a little more expensive than the usual grocery stores — which are all 10 to 25 minutes away.
Mikre-Ab Abera
hmmmmm....
As a kid growing up in rural Montana, co-ops were the ‘go to’ place for everything from fencing and tools and fertilizer to feed to clothes. Generally, there was a small dividend to the members each year, altho occasionally the ‘profit’ would be plowed back into investing in infrasture upgrades or new lines of merch.
Co-ops work well until the communists get control. And even back in then (in the 1950s and ‘60s), the Democrats were the home for such broken thinkers. And it only takes one such to poison the pot.
But the co-op concept works great in stratified communities where the farmers and ranchers and trades-folk were of one predominant religious vein (Lutheran, in the case to which I’m referring.) My folks were Catholic, but got along fine with the co-op community.