I'm not under the impression that "the same system we have now but a bunch of worker coops" would be some kind of ideal society, but it's far and away a better business structure than the ones we have now.
What are the barriers to successful coops being established?
Presumably that would also apply to capitalist small businesses though
Indeed it does.
There are even more hurdles for a co-op though if you wanna pay everyone equally and well instead of exploiting the shit out of workers.