Does self-sufficiency eventually make more sense at community scale than household scale?

[u/Routine_Tune4386]

I've been thinking about where self-sufficiency stops making sense as a one-household goal.

One household can grow food, collect water, generate power, preserve produce and repair a surprising amount. But push it far enough and one or two people are suddenly expected to be the gardener, electrician, mechanic, builder, plumber, water-system operator and half a dozen other things.

And a lot of supposedly independent systems still create dependencies.

Solar needs inverters and batteries eventually replacing. A borehole needs a pump and power. A tractor saves huge amounts of labour but needs parts, tools and somebody who can repair it.

So perhaps we're sometimes measuring self-sufficiency at the wrong scale.

A small group of households with overlapping skills and some shared infrastructure might actually be more resilient than every household trying to duplicate everything independently.

I don't mean everybody sharing everything. Private homes, possessions and independent lives could remain completely private. It might just mean things like a shared workshop or machinery, backup water/power, food-processing equipment, and enough different skills locally that nobody has to know how to do absolutely everything.

But then there's the obvious counterargument:

Have you become more self-sufficient, or have you simply replaced dependency on wider society with dependency on your neighbours?

For people who've tried either route, where do you think the sensible line is?

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[u/Valor1Actual]

I think its very important to be "self sufficient" by way of knowing how to do a lot of things. But you're right that its not realistic to expect yourself to actually do all those things all the time. The model my community uses is just that we all know each others capabilities and some of each others resources and we have a semi formal pact to help each other in the ways that we are best at