In some places it's fairly common. Check out this network of 257 cooperatives in Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

We need better financial tools to allow employees to take out loans to purchase companies from owners and form worker cooperatives.

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/jeremy-corbyn-unveils-right-own-john-lewis-style-employee-ownership-policy-1581548

I know of some examples of employees that purchased from owners:

• Sexy Pizza in Denver
• Pizza Shuttle in Milwaukee

The availability of capital for this type of organization, the capital concentration on the opposing side and its market power is what's holding us back.

To elaborate:

Coops are fundamentally anti-capitalist, they're socialist. Why? Because they threaten to change the capitalist model where only people who hold significant capital get to decide how to profit from most workers' labour, to a model where most workers decide that democratically and equally own their workplaces. If coops are to become the dominant firm structure, it means no more Zuckerbergs or Thiels wielding unimaginable power over hundreds of thousands of employees directly* and the rest of the economy indirectly. This means that the people in this position of power today would do everything they can to stop coops from taking significant root. Since they are the VCs that dole out capital for startups, that means no capital for coop startups from them. It also means applying every market and non-market leverage they have to kill any coops that threaten to become viable competitors.

This doesn't mean we can't start coops and make them successful. It does however means it's much more difficult than starting a normal capitalist-funded startup. People who are in a position to attempt it probably should. I think a lot of capable, professional tech comrades would join and work a lot harder than they would at your typical startup. But it would still be an uphill battle without gov't support which already goes to capitalist tech corpos. This is why this battle has to go on multiple fronts. One is creating coops where and when possible. The other is unionizing existing corpos to gain labour power that can be leveraged to curb the oligarch's power. The third is fighting at the political level for state funding for coops and labour rights. Those three reinforce each other in increasing the economic power of employees (workers) both at coops and traditional corpos relative to the power of the oligarch (capitalist) class.

* For example forcing their employees to develop software for digital addiction instead of working to eliminate misinformation on the biggest social network in the world at the threat of termination.

Italy does this! They have a strong worker commune culture on the region they make the parmesan cheese at.

A co-op is fundamentally not capitalism if it does indeed afford ownership of the means of production and value of the products proportionately to its members. Capitalism != commerce, that misconception is a very powerful pro-Capitalist tool. Capitalism is specifically a system with its own relations of power organized around private ownership, profit maximization, and infinite growth; it does not refer to just the concepts of wealth or trade or even profit driven organizing.

Why the fuck aren’t we doing more of it?

Because we're stupid.

Because we're stupid.