the other day there was a transit outage while I was riding the tram and the PA system said that you could speak with a transit authority employee for "mutual aid". it was baffling
That's shorthand for "other agencies are offering our agency mutual aid in the form of getting our passengers elsewhere, possibly without additional payment". It is, uh, decidedly non-obvious, though.
I don’t think that’s true, or at least not true of people who advocate for mutual aid. I mean, the *discourse* may be something different, but no one I work with thinks they are mutually exclusive.
It often arises in times of government failure already, pandemic/natural disasters. It can be used for recruitment. But yea you can't replace government with ANY type of charity. It's like you can't easily fix voting in fascists with other means of resistance. And yet still we find ourselves here
I worked at GoFundMe and it's amazing to me how few people know it was founded by a couple of libertarian surfer types from San Diego who explicitly want it to replace all government "handouts".
In my personal experience it’s more “the government isn’t doing enough/anything so we need to step in” than that, but life is a rich tapestry so not all of our experiences are the same.
Of course the problem is all charity/welfare is an economy of scale. Mutual aid is the least effective way of creating relief for the largest number where it's needed most.
Part of it is the food bank effect, given that food banks are a lot more effective with money than actual food because they have better leverage as wholesale purchasers. The other part is that organizations are better at preventing their aid from being diverted to e.g.: scalpers.
It isn't though - hunger in 2025 is first and foremost a logistical tragedy and not a scarcity one. Donating money to individual Gazans only moves food from one mouth to another whereas donating to Gaza food aid orgs gets calories past the blockade.
It's important to distinguish between actual mutual aid networks (in the mutualist theoretical sense) v. the "mutual aid" that's popular online (i.e. charity donations but to individuals). The former does benefit from economies of scale, and scopes to entire communities instead of individuals.
I mean a mutual aid network that successfully achieves a sustainable consensus on the logistics of rapid resource distribution that's adaptable to changing circumstances and disruptive action is very much theoretical as well.
I think a really important test is "how would mutualist aid feed Gazans whilst also defending itself against Israeli disruption" and I have a hard time imagining a reality that's better than what current NGOs do with a non-anarchist structure.
I had to very carefully explain this to someone the other day because the term has on a talismanic value, but it seems like this should be obvious. If problems could be solved in this way, churches would’ve done it a long time ago
I was attacked by the mother of a elected official
I lost my car my phone my job and virtually everything.
I have spine injuries ill never be able to fix.
I haven't seen over 100 dollars in my account in months... to top it off I had to spend months of hate from assholes because who I am....
This paper is like, the "Heartbreaking: Worst Person You Know Just Made a Great Point" for me (a right-libertarian critique by Samuel Hammond of the "replace the state with charity" canard), about why a welfare state is still necessary. https://www.independent.org/tir/2019-spring/it-still-takes-a-nation/
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I lost my car my phone my job and virtually everything.
I have spine injuries ill never be able to fix.
I haven't seen over 100 dollars in my account in months... to top it off I had to spend months of hate from assholes because who I am....
I live from donation to donation... without help..id be dead.
https://www.independent.org/tir/2019-spring/it-still-takes-a-nation/