Vanguard is a co-op that's owned by its funds which in turn are owned by present and future retirees. Instead of investing in individual stocks like Microsoft,

Vanguard is a co-op that's owned by its funds which in turn are owned by present and future retirees. Instead of investing in individual stocks like Microsoft, Vanguard's index funds make it easy to invest in e.g. an index of all US stocks, which is less volatile. What exactly is it you find so sinister about index funds? And why do you think Vanguard (a co-op) is worse than Fidelity (a publicly traded company which also provides similar retirement index funds)? Is it just because Vanguard's funds are more popular and therefore bigger?