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?
A. They don’t know about such things. This isn’t as popular as you seem to think. Let’s talk about that after.
B. There’s no way that works the way you seem to imply. If they have to get the land for it, they probably aren’t poor, but even if they were given stuff, how much are they given.
C. People like things. So how is this mutual aid group supposed to afford, let’s say a car per person? Are they buying everyone a home, and a car? Or are they making cars. Similarly, how does this work with skilled individuals. I’m a programmer, I can make computers work, who makes my computers, or more importantly my daughter got sick last night, we had the ER in society, in this alternate society is there a doctor on call 24/7?
But let’s go back to A.
I think you linked www.mutualaidhub.org, so I’m using that. I just looked up a listing of mutual aid networks near me. The only ones I found in LA and San Diego (county), after clicking through 10-20 I stopped because I got a good idea about what they are. Someone on here said they’re like communism and communes. The mutual aid networks I found were minor help, a few were food services, one was just a nightly call, and so on. Quite a few were now defunct as well, which kind of tells how they went.
The one that was taking help was asking for VOLUNTEERS, not people who partake in all the services, and none of them offered all the services. I could quit a job and volunteer there, but I still need money, housing, I like games, I like electricity, I like computers. Again how are we getting those? I haven’t even touched on the idea of taxes as well.
Really the point is… From what little I saw when I looked this up Mutual Aid Network doesn’t seem to mean what you are implying, but even if they did… well I’m doubting most of those have enough skilled individuals that joining them even as a poor person would offset the problems.