In Germany, each club is required to be owned at least 51% by fans. I believe Real Madrid and Barcelona is owned by the fans. AFC Wimbledon is owned and run by supporters.
Because Scotland has a closed-shop league and you need to offer the SFL three years of audited accounts upon admission, something the current team can't do either (look for Spartans or Linlithgow Rose to point this out if they also apply for that spot). Most of the supporters wouldn't want to watch a team play in the South of Scotland League or the Juniors when they're used to winning the SPL and playing European Football. It's not feasible. If they could manage that for three years and have a league club fold (or have someone like East Stirling stink up the place for three seasons on the trot) then they could apply for league admission, but it'd be a long, complicated task. Gretna 2008 is run by the supporters of the old club, I believe. They play in the East of Scotland League (having moved from the SoS).
I've wondered this as well, if so many Rangers fans think Green has hijacked the team and they say they'd support the team if they "played in the streets" what difference would it make if they played in the South of Scotland League? While it would likely be the most well supported club in the league I think many ardent supporters would be disappointed to see how few would actually follow.
Frankly, the very fact that the supporters failed to start such an initiative is about as abject a record as that of old Rangers management. This could have been a golden opportunity to have a more fan-oriented club rise out of the ashes. Seriously, with such a big supporter base, you'd think they'd be able to raise a few millions.
Even if the fans forebore on half their daily consumption of Tennent's Super, they could only buy so many shares.
While true, I think the OP was more in regards to starting an entirely new club, not buying the existing one. The problem is to raise the funds necessary to field anything more then a pub team would require a majority of the fans to buy in. However I feel that most fans, even if not necessarily the most vocal ones, are willing to give Green a shot. I was not proposing such a situation but wondering why some hardliners do not, perhaps they're most as unrealistic as I might suspect.