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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.

#postScarcity #freeFridge #mutualAid #solarPunk