I’ve been looking through some US and EU labor data and I have started to wonder why don’t more of the working poor join local mutual aid groups instead of staying at their likely shitty jobs or relying on charities?
This is a study on the labour distribution in the US among the working poor
On table 4 it shows that there are about 5,812,000 people that are classified as working poor ( Its says number in thousands so I multiplied the number given by 1000) and that alot of those jobs are in essential services like making food or providing support to others.
Similar diversity is show in the EU as well
So if most of these people decided to stop working at their current job and instead bring that those skills to a mutual aid network wouldn’t they still get most of the resources they need because other specialists would be there to help them and also live a generally more happy life?
Also the reason why I am saying instead of charities is because charities become less effective the more people request from them because they have limited resources to share and also mainly supported by wealthy people that can unilaterally give and take away support.
Whilst mutual aid networks can take the diversity that more people joining the network gives them and use it to offer more services to other people in that community.
This seems like a no brainer so what am I missing?
at least in the US, and from the experience of watching that happen, the problem is there’s more people that focus on the “aid” part and forget the “mutual” part. This causes the people who were reciprocating to leave because the returns were largely unequal, leading to an over-all deterioration of the services that could be provided by the group- which in turn leads to fewer people joining in the first place.
This seems like it can be fixed by making it so that before you get aid you have to join the mutual aid network first and secondly making it public knowledge what requests each individual member has contributed.
So how do you determine if someone has contributed enough to receive something in return? What about people who cannot meet that demand, because of sickness and/or disability or other reasons?
It would be up to the individual that wants to support the request not necessarily the group. If there is someone that is known to not be able to provide something because they are sick I’d assume there would still be some people that would want to help them. Also people with disabilities aren’t helpless and can still be useful to a community. So where they can’t in help in one way they can help in another.
Edit: are to aren’t
> I’d assume
That’s the thing, your view of humanity is rather idealistic. Most people are too cynical to assume that other people will help them out of the goodness of their heart. Not to mention that there are loads of people who indeed WOULDN’T help simply because someone else needs help.
> Also people with disabilities aren’t helpless and can still be useful to a community
Obviously. But “making it public knowledge what requests each individual member has contributed” will inevitably lead to scrutiny of people who don’t contribute as much as others. That’s where you’d need to decide whether this person (who seems to be receiving more than they’re giving) actually cannot do more than they’re doing or whether they’re abusing the system.
Not really. Now you’re giving unequal reciprocation to the people that run it. Nobody is going to join if they can’t get help but have to provide it first.
Especially people with more specialized skill sets.