Zero-Cost-of-Living is not utopian fantasy; it is ecological design returned to human culture. For most of history, Earth offered abundance without rent. Forests fed us, rivers watered us, clay and wood sheltered us, kinship cared for us. Only recently have these basics been captured, commodified, and turned into “the cost of living.” To live at zero-cost is to return to the logic of ecosystems: where waste becomes food, where the sun powers everything, where cycles close, and where survival is a given — freeing human creativity for culture, art, science, play, and spirit. In this state, money becomes optional, not existential. The nervous system can relax. Children can grow without the shadow of debt. Adults can dream without the pressure of bills.

Zero-Cost-of-Living does not mean poverty or sacrifice. It means re-designing our homes, landscapes, and communities so that needs are met by the patterns of nature herself: food forests in place of supermarkets, rainwater in place of bottled water, compost toilets in place of sewage bills, solar in place of endless electricity debt, care woven in community rather than purchased as service.

It is freedom not from responsibility, but through responsibility: to steward the abundance that was always meant to be our birthright.