Right, there will always be problems within human societies no matter what kind of clever system people come up with. I think the goal should be on creating systems that mitigate the worst excesses and keep society stable.

The problem with competition is that it directly leads to wealth concentration, and the problems you keep raising. As companies compete then some companies will lose out and others will gain their market share. Successful companies end up growing through this process. And the bigger the company gets the more initial capital is required to compete with it. This is a problem for both capitalist enterprise and cooperatives.

However, I think that cooperatives mitigate the problem in an important way where wealth distribution is more even. If a cooperative becomes a monopoly, it will still distribute wealth it generates fairly within the cooperative. And I think this also helps with the overall corruption problem because now you don’t have wealth concentrated with a few individuals that can use it to have disproportionate influence on society.

I’m personally skeptical there is a real path towards the kind of social democracy you speak of in a society where there is mass wealth inequality. Public opinion is largely determined by the media that’s owned by the oligarchs, and people’s votes are swayed by sleek political campaigns that need large amounts of funding. Since the government is already captured by the rich, there is no path for the government to pass legislation that would make it more difficult for rich people to exercise their influence over society. Hence I don’t really see how reformism can work in practice.