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Eco-Communalism

When you decide to go eco-communal, it means you’re changing your way of life: living simply, sustainably, locally, and self-sufficiently. Think: Thoreau on Golden Pond.

Eco-communalism is short for “ecological communalism,” which focuses on the idea that, if we decentralize everything and focus more on living the good life than the consumerist-centric life, we’d all be much better off.

One reason eco-communalists aren’t fans of one huge, centralized capitalistic society is because it’s open to vulnerability. For instance, if there’s a natural disaster that affects the grocery shipments from one country to another, then the receiving country is SOL. If only they were self-sufficient, there wouldn’t be this domino-effect of one bad thing happening far away, and affecting many places. Another example runs from just looking at what happens when the U.S. economy takes a dive: it affects other economies all around the world. If we were all doing our own things a bit more, then we’d have our own tiny domino chains instead of one, big, long domino chain of consequences.

If the U.S.'s economy gets a cold, everyone else gets ebola. Eco-communalism also focuses on things we need to survive into the future...which we’re not putting a lot of effort into right now. Like biodiversity, so giant swaths of crops don’t get wiped out from a plant disease, and living greenly to keep climate change from making us go extinct.

Find other enlightening terms in Shmoop Finance Genius Bar(f)