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?

  • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 year ago

    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.

    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.

    • Danterious@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 year ago

        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.