What if there aren’t Enough Mutual Aid Champions?

What if at the time being people are too damn busy cuz they have to pay rent mortgage bills food and the community is too busy working to expend the energies needed to be a champion. What if some people could make it their job to support those who do not have enough social capital to expend or when activists are too busy with their own work or being other people’s champions? – John Bush

In response to How to Bootstrap a Resilient Mutual Aid Society and 38 Objections to a Resilient Mutual Aid Society Answered, John Bush of the Foundation for a Free Society had a couple more, very excellent questions.

1. If the individual members are keeping their own money, how can they expect to bail themselves out of jail?

   Activists and others engaging in risky behavior (like growing vegetables, shingling your own roof, videotaping cops, pamphleting, etc) need to think ahead and be prepared. You could engage a lawyer-friend who could access your funds, prepare a spouse or room-mate, have a power of attorney ready for anyone to use (but not signed), or store some rainy-day funds with a trusted friend. An unprepared activist presents a market opportunity. Someone could create a business specifically to lend bail money to people in dire straits. Isn’t this what bail bondsmen do? In any case, if you think the marketplace can handle all eventualities, it can definitely handle this, too.

2. Well, what if at the time being people are too damn busy cuz they have to pay rent mortgage bills food and the community is too busy working to expend the energies needed to be a champion. What if some people could make it their job to support those who do not have enough social capital to expend or when activists are too busy with their own work or being other people’s champions? Would that not be a noble venture? That way there is always an available champion on hand.

   The resilient model contemplates add-on for-profit services. A champion-for-hire seems like a fine add-on service to me. However, if someone is in such dire straits that they can’t find their own champion, will they have the funds to hire one? Will you be able to trust them to pay you for your services? This sounds like a high-risk venture. I question the profitability. But you could solicit donations from all of those busy champions. That might work. And it would definitely be noble. A training course in being a champion would also help expand the champion pool.

If you have any questions or criticisms, I’d love to hear them. This resilient model is open source. I claim no exclusive right to it. Anyone can use it. So it’s to everyone’s advantage to either find the bugs and improve them or discard it entirely if it has fatal flaws.