Trash Panda (@raccoon) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:
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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.
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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.
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@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 --
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@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.
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@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?
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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