Consumers need to take a lot more responsibility. From which store they buy from has an impact of what the corporate climate looks like 20 years from now.

I really like co-operatives. My second bank is a co-operative. My gasoline station is a co-operative refinery and retailer. When people complain about the big banks and big oil companies earning too much profits, I like to bring up that they should join these co-operatives, any profits come back to them in consumer dividends.

My life insurance company also used to be a co-operative. But for some reason, it restructured itself to be sold to a public insurance company. In recent years, my co-operative bank and gasoline station have been amalgamating their local business units into bigger co-operative legal entities. I suspect that it is only a matter of time before these co-operatives will be sold to a for-profit corporation.

Why are these co-operatives being sold off? My hypothesis is that it is a constant struggle to keep a fickle customer base who will change brands for a 1% slight price reduction or for a clever marketing jingle. Without an intrinsic motivation for belonging to and supporting a co-operative, consumers will easily wander away to a firm that has a little bit better business sense than a co-operative can afford to pay for.

About eight years ago, I got fed up with Facebook. Rather than just complain, I somehow invented another kind of social media outlet that is based on the co-operative model. The users decided on things like advertising and data mining, not profit-driven executives.

I got a lot of people to visit this website, but no one really investigated and got back to me. From my perspective, it seems social media users prefer the works of Mr. Zukleberg to any kind of co-operative.

It is paradox to complain so much about unaltruistic corporate forces, yet not support co-operatives in any meaningful way.

You can find my co-operative social media at:

http://dvfoodchain.org/Consensus/index.html

Please prove me wrong by reading about this idea. We need more co-operatives.