No they are not, and no it is not. A corporation is a government granted liability shield intended to foster certain public policy goals. A bunch of people coop

No they are not, and no it is not. A corporation is a government granted liability shield intended to foster certain public policy goals. A bunch of people cooperating without adopting the liability shield of a corporation/LLC is eminently possible. It's likely that the massive scaling we've seen would be untenable if the cooperating individuals could be held responsible for the efforts of the group, but that we're suffering a lack of corporate responsibility indicates that wouldn't necessary be a bad thing and thus it's disingenuous to just equate the two.