There's reason to believe that this sort of ... > Mutual aid. Without rulers. Living together. Working things out together. ... does work at larger scales too. The free-software movement, for instance, seems organized along these lines, and who know how many people are involved in it. And, if I remember correctly, there's some evidence which indicates that the Indus Valley civilization was organized along similar principles. No rulers, no markets, just a bunch of proto-hippies implementing things like indoor plumbing, irrigation, mathematics, metallurgy, and cities thousands of years before anyone else would get around to these sorts of things.
Perhaps when we can reach a place where it isn't necessary to employ cheap labor to make most items cheap, we can move closer to this. I really have hopes that 3D-printing is going to lead to a local production economy. I have these rosie visions of modern day blacksmiths, printing off everything from custom chairs to toasters for their local customers. Once again regional aesthetic movements and problem solving. I think part of the problem is that most of what I 'need' is not built by anyone I know. My grandpa used to work at an adding machine factory here in Detroit. He could walk into a store, look at their adding machine, and he knew who built it. -That has to have an effect.