You can absolutely do that within a tight knit group of like-minded individuals. The thing is the Free Rider problem. So you end up building a group of friends that will help each other out, and occasionally you let someone else into this community that you build, and very quickly people can be shut out of it if you abuse the group's goodwill.
Without an enforcement mechanism, even otherwise honest people could end up turning into Free riders.
This isn't a problem in the abstract, some hypothetical that I've created in my mind. My wife and I are both very generous people, and we've had to learn to be very careful about who we help. If you're not careful, you can end up in a situation where not only are you sitting there giving up a ton of your excess to some individual, many of those Free riders end up coming to resent you because you're not giving them more. I remember one time, we ended up giving a substantial amount to a friend of mine who hadn't worked for six months because he had to watch his wife slowly die of cancer, and someone we were helping at the time got angry because we didn't give that money to them (even though we had consistently been helping that person for years). That sort of thing has happened a couple times, and it's incredibly disheartening when it does.
In that sense, building that community and building those links of trust and providing mutual aid reminds me of my suggestion that people build something. It doesn't have to be a thriving career, it doesn't have to be a lot of things, but at the very least you can build communities. It doesn't matter if you're too old, it doesn't matter if you're too dumb, it doesn't matter if you're not strong enough, with a good heart you can go out and find like-minded people and build those communities.
Without an enforcement mechanism, even otherwise honest people could end up turning into Free riders.
This isn't a problem in the abstract, some hypothetical that I've created in my mind. My wife and I are both very generous people, and we've had to learn to be very careful about who we help. If you're not careful, you can end up in a situation where not only are you sitting there giving up a ton of your excess to some individual, many of those Free riders end up coming to resent you because you're not giving them more. I remember one time, we ended up giving a substantial amount to a friend of mine who hadn't worked for six months because he had to watch his wife slowly die of cancer, and someone we were helping at the time got angry because we didn't give that money to them (even though we had consistently been helping that person for years). That sort of thing has happened a couple times, and it's incredibly disheartening when it does.
In that sense, building that community and building those links of trust and providing mutual aid reminds me of my suggestion that people build something. It doesn't have to be a thriving career, it doesn't have to be a lot of things, but at the very least you can build communities. It doesn't matter if you're too old, it doesn't matter if you're too dumb, it doesn't matter if you're not strong enough, with a good heart you can go out and find like-minded people and build those communities.
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