My response:

You hit the nail on the head! My husband and I were having this very conversation the other day. The proverbial American dream is predicated on the willingness of individuals to work towards self-betterment.
Growing up, I always admired my grandfather who came here (legally) from Honduras as a 17-year-old boy with his brother, joined the merchant marines and went off to serve in WW2. Over the years, he worked to elevate himself from his initial position as wiper – wiping the pipes on the ship – to eventually becoming an engineer. He went from speaking one language (Spanish) to five (Spanish, English, Italian, Portugese, and Tagalog) and even managed to teach himself calculus. All of this with only a sixth grade education! My grandfather became a citizen in the 50s and has always had great pride in this country.
I think it is a great travesty when men and women are robbed of their ambition and willingness to work to get ahead by a system that makes it easy to coast by at a subsistence level. Both individual integrity and the willingness and desire to work together with others are compromised by a “welfare state”. During the years I taught middle school, I always made it my mission to inspire some ambition in my students rather than complacency and an expectation of something for nothing.

Co-ops would require people to come together and work together, keyword: work. But, I think co-ops will get more play as this discussion continued.