Indie developers typically aren't interested in working at BigCorp, but perhaps for survival they could consolidate in to worker-owned companies.
It wouldn't be the same as working for yourself, but it wouldn't be the same as working for some faceless corporation either.
If the very product they're trying to sell needs to disappear, then your recommendations of "consolidate into worker co-op" or "create a larger company" does not have any useful meaning.
You've got cause-&-effect of product and business structure backwards.
What happens in the real world:
1st) have a viable product that sells for sustainable revenue ---> 2nd) amount of incoming money helps guide decisions about structuring the company to be sole-proprietor vs traditional incorporated vs workers cooperative.
The reverse direction of...
1st) organize a workers co-op ---> 2nd) sell something-I-don't-know-what-it-could-be-but-your-current-apps-need-to-disappear.
... is an academic dead end. If you're going to hand wave away where the money comes from to pay the salaries of the workers owning the co-op, it doesn't matter that they formed a co-op for better working conditions.
The article was about sustainable revenue in the long tail of the app store. A workers co-op is an unrelated tangent and doesn't solve how to survive in that long tail.
Your core assumption seems to be that changing the ownership model is enough to counter the lack of autonomy that comes from spending all day in a hierarchical business with other people. I'm actually struggling to imagine how you arrived at this point of view.
There's a list on wiki (not all USA): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_employee-owned_compani...