Trash Panda (@raccoon) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
-
Trash Panda (@raccoon) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
Original Question and Thread: https://hollow.raccoon.quest/notes/a2jvqqajuvif0aog
Question: "A thing that would worry me is people taking advantage of this and taking a shitload of food without needing it. Like, people who could just afford buying it, you know? Does it ever happen?"
Awesome question!
And it has a couple of answers or way to approach it. I'll try to answer it in those couple of ways.
Answer 1) Let them. Let them take as much as they want or need. We'll just produce more. We have the means. - There is often a worry of people "abusing" a system. This is a SCARCITY mindset. It worries that there's not enough to go around, so folks will abuse it and take from others.... BUUUUUT.... there IS enough to go around... you can take what you need, heck take more than you need, and it will be fine. We. Have. Enough.
Answer 2) Let's actually threat model this out. Like... Is this really a problem? If so... who would do it.
So the short answer is, it's not really a problem in practice. There are many free fridges already going. No one really "abuses" (in any meaningful definition of the word) the system.
So it's not a hypothetical. We can just look at what's actually happening. And it's not a concern.
Long Answer: When you grow up in scarcity and first encounter post-scarcity, it is NORMAL to hoard things.
Let me say that again.
It is NORMAL for people to take what they need NOW and then take more for what they think they will need LATER for security and even add a buffer on top of that JUST TO BE SURE!!!
Cool.
Let them.
After a while, they realize that they TOO are not consuming all they have and they start to FEED BACK INTO the post-scarcity input / output.
This is called healing.
Artificial Scarcity (read Capitalism) hurts people.
Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid heals people.If part of that process is them using the post-scarcity system a lot until they heal and get used to having enough... then it's chill. Let them "abuse" it. It'll be fine.
Answer 3) If we give into this fear, we produce the result of the fear without the fear itself ever needing to be realized. To put it another way, if we worry people will abuse it and there won't be enough food for others, and we don't do it out of that fear... then..... there DEFINITELY isn't food for others. Lol! Out of a fear that the prophesy will come true, we have ensured that it came true. So... like.... just do it... and deal with any problems that come up when they do.
Answer 4) You mentioned "People who could just afford buying it" could take things they don't need.
Cool. Let them!
I don't want ANYONE to have to pay for food.
I want food to be free.
But this line of thinking that we ONLY GIVE TO THOSE WHO DESERVE IT leads to insidious things like "means testing' where we SPEND MORE MONEY AND TIME AND EFFORT to keep food out of the mouths of those who "might not need it" than if we just used that money time and effort to feed everyone including th
e "rich".Post-scarcity means post. scarcity. It's not scarce. You can get free food even if you could afford to buy it.
Just feed people.
We have enough.
-
O [email protected] shared this topic
-
-
Hard to sell something when people can get it for free
️Also, you know what? If someone is so poor that they take donated bagels and canned food from a food pantry and sell it to make some money, they pretty obviously are poor and need the money quite badly. It's also a case where if something becomes a problem, then you address it at that point.
-
@tinker @raccoon Interesting answer. I like the idea of food being free. How is that achieved, though? Seeds cost money. Fertilizer costs money. Farming implements cost money. Operating farm implements cost money--fuel, maintenance, etc. Labor costs money. Transportation costs money. Processing costs money. So, I'm interested in hearing how food becomes free in a mutual aid economy.
-
There's a short-term answer here and a long-term answer. The short term answer is that food can be "free" for those that receive it because we over-produce (and then throw it away) under the current system. This is really being subsidized (by governments, by businesses that order too much) etc...
(1/2)
-
The long-term part is where you need to expand a mutual aid/circular economy into everything. A transformation from working to produce profit to working to produce "enough".
Like, for labor specifically, there's the idea of a Time Bank. I do X hours of work for you, and you do X hours of work for me. You need extra hands picking fruit in the orchard? I do that, and maybe next month you help me fix some things around my house.
-
Also, some library systems operate seed libraries now. These are really only at the scale of gardening at the moment, but there's no reason the principle can't be expanded. You take what you need, and bring your surplus (if any). Plants happily produce excess seeds, we just need to capture, store, and distribute them.
-
True! You can utilize a library-system for those too. My city had a tool library for a while that charged a small fee for access to all of the tools. That gives you access to the efficiency of the tools without having to own one of everything.
Where I grew up, this was often done informally - farmers would lend each other tractors, help each other fix things. The big game changer would be making it an institution open to everyone.
-
S [email protected] shared this topic
-
Maggie Maybereplied to My camera shoots fascists last edited by
@Mikal @bipartisan @tinker @raccoon the last time I was at the food pantry I brought some hygiene products to donate. The man working the food pantry thanked me and told me they would fly off the shelves. And I said yes, that makes sense, most of us can get food stamps but you can’t buy toothpaste or toilet paper with food stamps.
This man was shocked to hear this. I was like yeah dude toilet paper isn’t food. But I guess if you’ve never thought about it you wouldn’t know, and I suppose he was horrified when he realized that poor people with zero income can’t buy toilet paper.
So yeah if I donate something to the food pantry and someone takes it and sells it for money they need to use for something else, that’s literally none of my business.
-
@nix @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
I have a failure mode in mind. I understand that in trying to classify the deserving and not you can get to bad situations.
What do you do when someone comes and always empties out the fridges everywhere and then tries to sell that to people? The people without means need that stolen food and will pay some rather than full price at the store. The people who stole the food will make SOME money, a lot of people will go without food and a lot of food will be --
-
@Madagascar_Sky @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
This just doesn't happen in my experience with food shares, pantries, etc. Who would they sell to and why? Not many would buy secondhand items off the street.
If they do manage to sell it, they'd have to undercut grocery prices. Which is still better than the model of groceries selling food for profit, and throwing away everything else.
But mostly, this just isn't a threat I've seen play out in the real world.
-
@nix @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
Have you ever seen any group rivalry? One group empties out everything just so that another group can't get it? Like one church group against another?
-
@Madagascar_Sky @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
Nobody has the capacity to "empty out everything" in my experience. In my city, all groups grab as much as they can, which still leaves plenty at the stores, and usually the food shares still have extra (of some things, often bread) at the end of the day.
-
@nix @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
Hmmm. This is the current meta though, no guarantee this will work in the future. Like outlawing homeless people from sleeping in the park, there is land but we'd rather they not get it.
-
@Madagascar_Sky @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
I would suggest spending time with a mutual aid group and getting a feel for it yourself. There really isn't any animosity between groups, even with very different backgrounds. A food share is where you'll see anarchists, socialists, and Catholics all working together and chatting.
-
@nix @scottlink @tinker @raccoon
That is a great idea. Yeah, charity is the current 'solution' to the artificial scarcity in the current climate.
I'm just worried about the future. Malicious groups can and do exist. They outlawed homelessness. They outlawed 'feeding the homeless'. They could probably outlaw this too. If they see any political benefit out of it.
Seize the means of production it is then.
-
@Madagascar_Sky @nix @scottlink @raccoon - For some hopefullness, Look at Food Not Bombs in Houston TX. They have been actively attacked by the (democratic!) mayor and the police there. They are surviving.
And concerning "seize the means of production", we don't have to. We already have the means. I say "ignore their means of production and ignore their economies - we make our own".
They are obsolete. We're already building the replacement.
-
J [email protected] shared this topic
