It's like Rod Dreher has never even heard of a co-op:
Good for those kids. Now, your typical conservative will note that the winners of that contest didn't take showers for two weeks, sneer, "Ugh, dirty hippies," and move on. The real story here is how a particular kind of asceticism is being incorporated as a social ideal by these students, and lived out not with eat-your-peas grimness, but with pleasure, even joy. They are doing something through creative renunciation to rebuild what decadence helped destroy.
Where are conservatives in this? This idealistic project is fundamentally conservative. No conservative politician has any idea how to relate to what these kids are doing. Aside from some Evangelical churches, I'm not aware of any politically or culturally conservative institution or group that can speak to this kind of idealism.
The reason your typical conservative might look at this group of people and think "ugh, dirty hippies," is, well... they're probably not conservatives, wouldn't describe themselves as conservative, wouldn't agree with any policy enactment a conservative might like. Also: conservatism speaking to idealism?
Compare this to Munger's sense-talking on Peak Oil (see also here, look at highlights for 25:13).
If you don't accept the narrative that we're flinging headlong to our doom, then you're less likely to find its gloomy portents everywhere.
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