All I want is to be left alone?

One of the major concerns of attempting to reduce your dependence on current structures of "support" provided by contemporary government, is whether you will actually be allowed to drop off the grid. The structures set up to support western culture have been succesful in providing basic services and provide a minimal safety-net in case the unthinkable befalls you and you are destitute, but aren't these simply control mechanisms?

If we try and remove ourselves from these state apparatus and form more localised, more useful, more humane groupings can we? This isn't really a thought experiment, it's a genuine question as energy descent will require much more localisation, much more community cooperation, much more self-reliance.

"The decentralized provision of basic necessities is not likely to flow from a utopian vision of a perfect or even improved society (as have some social movements of the past). It will emerge instead from iterative human responses to a daunting and worsening set of environmental and economic problems, and it will in many instances be impeded and opposed by politicians, bankers, and industrialists. It is this contest between traditional power elites on one hand, and growing masses of disenfranchised poor and formerly middle-class people attempting to provide the necessities of life for themselves in the context of a shrinking economy, that is shaping up to be the fight of the century."

http://www.postcarbon.org/article/714558-the-fight-of-the-century

I cannot recommend Richard Heinberg more highly. He along with others at the Post Carbon Institute are trying to challenge the status quo, trying to challenge business as usual model, I implore you all to read and get involved in any way you can.