A couple folks have brought up a great concern regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:

(I will not link the specific threads here as to discourage brigading).

Example concern: "It's funny how few of these projects last. I am an old school liberal where we recognize that intentions are not enough. Stuff has gotta work, and that leaves out a lot of hope-cope stuff like free stuff."

Example concern: Post-scarcity programs have been tried over & over. They run into the same issues. 80% decent folk vs 20% selfish sociopaths. [...] Free food outlets get vandalized by NIMBY's to "discourage the wrong sort. Volunteers burn-out & tire of those misusing facilities meant for the common good"

The general concern is that these initiatives "fail." And that the existence of this fail state is enough to discourage even attempting it in the first place.

A couple thoughts:

1) No they don't. Many initiatives fail. Many succeed. Sooo... yay life.

2) A common tech-bro / entrepreneur refrain is "I am a serial entrepreneur." or "Fail Fast, Fail Often, Fail Everywhere". Capitalistic endeavors fail all the time... but that's seen as a good thing there. Why are post-scarcity / mutual aid initiatives held to a different standard?

3) That said, it is important to know WHY those mutual aid / post-scarcity initiatives that fail, do fail. So that we can learn from their mistakes and push for better success. This is a great thought exercise to have.

To go into detail on the above thoughts:

1) It's just not true that all post-scarcity projects and mutual aid efforts fail. My specific free fridge project is in its third year and we're beginning new initiatives to spread and install new fridges. Richmond's free fridges are on their fifth year. Food Not Bombs was established in the 1980's. The NAACP was founded in 1909. So... like... what do you mean fail? Have some projects started that are no longer here, absolutely... but how is that different from any other human endeavor? Which brings me to the next point:

2) Capitalist and for-profit initiatives fail all the time. How many store fronts do you see that run a business and now run a different business? Approximately 60% of restaurants fail within the first year of operation and 80% fail within the first five years. Tech Bros always say "Fail Fast, Fail Often!" and they're praised for being self-labeled as "Serial Entrepreneurs". Does that stop them from trying? Nope. Folks will spin up a new endeavor again and again. Good for them!

Even if I die tomorrow... and fail at "staying alive"... I will have fed people. I have ALREADY SUCCEEDED in feeding people. I have fed people through the food bank. I have fed people through hot meal initiatives. I have fed people through this free fridge project. I have fed people through food rescue. I have fed people by growing hydroponics and giving that away for free. I have fed people by giving them a five dollar bill on the side of the road.

I have already succeeded.

And I will continue to succeed by growing out these initiatives.

3) These "you're gonna fail so don't even try" comes from two places. The first is malicious. They don't want you to succeed, so they tell you you can't. These are discouraging and depressing and I take a step back, feel sad, take a nap, then get up and continue on trying to ignore what they said (it sucks though, and reading these comments hurts, but whatcha gonna do?).

The second set are people that have failed at (or seen fail) post-scarcity initiatives that they wished would have succeeded. They are discouraged and are either venting their discouragement OR are warning you that you might fail in an effort to hope you prepare for it so you succeed.

This is fine.

We can heed this.

For me, in particular, I am not discouraged by temporary set backs. We had a threat of my fridge being shut down recently. We talked to the host and it's staying up (for now). But if it did go down, we would have built another one elsewhere. In fact, this little fright has spurred us to intentionally build elsewhere so that we don't have a SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE. Great. Resiliency.

So let's look at why mutual aid fails. Dean Spade in his book "Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next)" devotes entire chapters to analyzing this, but I'll only use a couple paragraphs here for the sake of brevity. These are my observations. Research more on your own!

Mutual Aid / Post-Scarcity often fails due to a couple reasons. Namely burnout and discouragement. If you treat mutual aid like charity, it will fail. If you pour all of yourself into it and do not take, you will dry up. If you push yourself further than you can, you will burn out.

You know what. You can burn out in your job, too, right? I would argue you burn out more often in capitalist initiatives because your managers treat you like a consumable and burn you out and then replace you. I would argue that I burn out and see burn out LESS in mutual aid efforts.

But still: You cannot over extend yourself.

I know it seems like I do a lot.

I don't.

I sleep a fuuuuck ton. My brain failed a while back (burnout in capitalism... yay). There are times when I can't do anything.

So I only work what I can and I only pursue that which fulfills me.

This is important. Me, personally, I LOVE food programs. I get dopamine rushes by doing it. If I tried to do voter registration or push city-council to do stuff, I would die. So I don't do that. Find the thing that really interests you and focus on that one thing. That frees up others to focus on their thing. Don't try to solve ALL of the world's problems. Focus on one simple thing and do that, when you can, as you can, and to the SUSTAINABLE effort that you can.

Further, I join or create initiatives that involve OTHER PEOPLE. I make sure that I'm part of a greater team where any one of us doesn't have to do much and the initiative continues on even if many of us stop working for a while. These initiatives take effort, sure, and even continued and intentional effort, but many hands make small work. The neat thing about community... is you have a community.

Lastly, I PERSONALLY USE the mutual aid efforts I build.

Again, not charity. MUTUAL aid. Mutual. Mutual means both ways.

I give to my free fridge and I TAKE from my free fridge. The free fridge provides me free food too!

The Olio App (used in the UK and some of Canada and elsewhere), encourages their Food Rescue Heroes to take 10% of what they rescue. So just by picking up food rescue, you immediately gain free food for yourself!

That's mutual aid. You are building an apparatus that makes YOUR life easier. If it makes your life easier, you're libel to continue at it, aren't you?

There are other aspects as to why *some* mutual aid fails and they're important to understand and account for.

But do not fail by not starting.

Fail by trying and then stopping after a while. Even temporary projects have succeeded while they were running. That is a worthwhile effort.

Maria Langer (@mlanger ) asks a great question regarding "Free Fridges" and Post-Scarcity Mutual Aid Food Distribution:

Original Question and Thread: https://mastodon.world/@mlanger/113764511068543932

Question: "What worries me more is people putting tainted food into it. There are a lot of seriously fucked up people in this world. I'm old enough to remember the tainted Tylenol bottles that led to everything being safety sealed today. One nut who has it in for poor people can do a lot of damage."

Awesome question!

The short answer is THIS HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!!! OH NOOOO!!!

But not for the *reasons* you think.

People put in food that is past its "best use by" date all the time. In fact, food rescue is all about getting food that would otherwise be thrown out, past the "use by" date (but still good), sorting out which food is still good, and using that!

Heck, in traditional charity Food Bank / Food Pantry distributions, we get a pallet of fresh grapefruits and 10% will have "natural penicillin" (yuck!) or gets squashed in transit, and can't be given out. That's tainted food. We just set it aside and compost or throw it out.

I'll do you one better! Do you ever find molded tainted food in your grocery store? Of course you do. Do you ever hear about food recalls after people have gotten sick from listeria or salmonella from a corporate food manufacturer? Of course you do. Have you ever gotten food poisoning from a capitalist restaurant? Yeah, we all have.

We try to minimize it, but our current system is by no means perfect in keeping out "tainted food'. Heck... how many corporate manufacturers INTENTIONALLY SELL US tainted food just for profit? All. The. Freaking. Time.

So...

How we deal with this in our Free Fridges?

Twice a day, we have a cleaning and maintenance shift. It usually takes about ten minutes. Whoever has that time slot goes through and cleans up any spilt food (I had some busted eggs this week). We go through the food in the fridge and pantry and throw out anything that looks bad. The person cleans up trash and boxes , etc.

Also, just like you check your food at the grocery store before you buy it (go through that dozen eggs to make sure none are cracked... and put back the ones that are cracked to be taken care of by the grocery staff), when you take from the free fridge, you do the same. You conduct due diligence. Check for discoloration, broken seals, bad smells, mold, etc. Just like normal.

So far as someone putting in food that is intentionally or maliciously poisoned? That very rarely happens if ever. For one, a lot of the food is sealed. For fresh fruit, poisoning often destroys it. For home cooked food, the folks that do that often do it in bulk and label it - so you know who is doing it. If they poison it, they get arrested... just like normal... Anything unlabeled or generally suspicious is not taken by folks first off and is thrown away when noticed.

This is like razors in halloween candy. It's just not an issue.

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.