Hell, sometimes you can’t even get basic government services with “knowing someone”.
Look up historical anarchist movements like the commune of Paris, or in more modern days the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (unlike what news coverage would have you believe, they're not just "Kurdish rebels"). Or if you want a quick read, check out their founding principles by reading Öçalan's brochure about Democratic Confederalism. Or for something less grandiose, just look into anarcho-syndicalism and workers' cooperatives.
It's not that alternative models haven't been tried yet, it's just that building egalitarian grassroots democratic structures within capitalist nation states is nearly impossible and even when you manage to do so, you now have to figure out how to interact with the rest of the world and prevent them from ending you.
Let's be realistic: the United Nations isn't exactly going to take interest in an autonomous territory that intentionally rejects nationhood. And if foreign powers (even the "socialist" nation states) have any political, economical or military interest in your territory, things are unlikely to end well for you.
Even if they somehow wound up in a magical perfect coop start state without rivals centralization would emerge and prevail yet again unless there were extremly significant changes to ensure different outcomes.