cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2258784
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?
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I think the biggest barrier is that you’re talking about a group of minimal skills that all require the rest of the business to use the skills they have and absolutely no resources to start with.
If you make food you need a kitchen and ingredients to be able to cook and then trade that for other services. All that requires money, or others to bring you food as payment for some other service you rendered. If you clean houses you need cleaning supplies. Now if you came in to cook or clean for someone who provides all the business needs then you’re golden but that’s not really how one of these communities work. You’re assuming that there are those who can afford the services and others who can only render them.
This is just a fancy name for a barter system. That requires and entire economy running in the system, not just some services.
The other comment hit the economic side well, but just to add on, the study you linked about people being happier is specifically concerning these groups during the pandemic.