Yes, the focus on individual capacity is misguided and foolish. The focus should be on community resiliency instead of individuals.
The cool part about focusing on community resiliency is it increases the mental health and well-being of the community members, as well as helping the local economy by focusing on self-sufficiency!
Foolish in what sense? It's not foolish when it works. It can certainly shield you against individual problems, such as losing a job.
In many cases, there are benefits to scale, but the optimal scale varies from one setting to another. Sometimes, the optimal "unit" is your block. Sometimes, your village. Sometimes, your family. And sometimes, yeah, just you.
At a massive scale, things start falling apart again, because the government - or any other organization notionally responsible for the well-being of millions - is not going to be particularly invested in your individual outcome. You're just a small part of a statistic that might be tracked somewhere. You don't quite qualify for a particular benefit because of your unique circumstances? Tough luck.
Individual capacity enables community resilience. If you have resources that can be shared, they can be shared with your neighbors.
Otherwise, we're either asking local government to invest in resilience or reinventing local government to ask this new body to invest in resilience. In either capacity, we are not investing in individual capacity, we're just trusting that the resources we need will be made available in time of need and sufficient to the needs of all.
Being prepared is part of community resilience. This is a false dichotomy. If you are totally unprepared for anything you are a burden on the community. If you at least have some basic ability to survive and help out others in an emergency that is anything but foolish for the community to support. Of course you should also invest in the community and other collective resources as well.
i agree that community resiliency is preferable. with this mindset, i help organize skillshares that support community food sovereignty, among other things.
community resiliency is also often overlooked in media - it's easier (and better marketing) to make a show about "preppers" buying merchandise. but the community aspect exists, probably even among those individuals, and gets much less attention.
but we live in times that make it difficult to build, find, and keep community. many people find individual projects more accessible. and in the end, individual capacity contributes to community resiliency.
the most radical (not reactionary) people i know are working all of these angles at once.
The cool part about focusing on community resiliency is it increases the mental health and well-being of the community members, as well as helping the local economy by focusing on self-sufficiency!