So, about that mutual aid vs. Harris campaigning thing, there's a couple of points that keep coming up. Let's talk about them for a bit.

"We don't know if they're scammers!"

Doesn't matter; a small chance of it going to someone who's "scamming" is still considerably better than knowing *for sure* that your donation will only be a drop in the bucket (like is the case for Harris fundraising).

And even if they *were* 'scammers', as I have previously pointed out, low-stakes scammers are disproportionately poor people, so it really doesn't matter for the purpose of supporting someone.

"Small chance? What if *most* of them are scammers?"

Do you actually believe that the world is in a good enough shape that it's more likely for someone asking for help to be a scammer, than to genuinely need help? Have you *looked* at folks' well-being lately?

"But I don't want to reward begging!"

You don't want to normalize asking for help? No, really, I mean it, this is a serious question - why, exactly, do you think this is a bad thing? Because chances are there's some internalized hate you need to work on there.

"If we just gave money, nobody would ever do anything productive again!"

Aside from this having been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked by research into motivation, you're also basically repeating conservative rhetoric. Are you progressive or are you not? Do you believe in the good of people or not? What are your politics *really*?

"But the greater good is more important!"

Okay. Have you done the math, and calculated what, exactly, that 'greater benefit' would be? How exactly your donation would concretely translate into a societal improvement? Because if you haven't, then this is a retroactive excuse, not a well-considered rationale.

If you have, you will probably pretty quickly have come to the conclusion that the amount of money we're raising here is insignificant in the bigger picture, that it will mainly be spent on a marketing campaign for an individual, and that there are zero assurances that it *will* even translate into anything good, even if Harris is elected.

Doesn't mean she isn't the better option compared to Trump, to be clear, but it's pretty hard to make a credible 'greater good' argument here; she only needs to win, *by how much* doesn't really matter.

In comparison, sending money to someone asking for mutual aid on here will likely save someone's literal life. Someone who, I might add, *then can contribute to improving politics*. You know, many hands make light work and all that. You can't fix politics when everybody is starving.

And if you believe that mutual aid recipients wouldn't make a useful contribution to the political environment, well. I invite you to ask yourself why you believe that, and sit and reflect on the answer for a while, because the problem there does not lie with the mutual aid recipients.

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