As much as I want an egalitarian society, I think the goal of making a mutual aid system universal places precisely the wrong emphasis on solving the problem (much in the same sense as making employment efficient). I don’t see how you can have any sort of universal guarantee absent the state – hell, I’m not sure thinking of things in terms of guarantees isn’t the problem in the first place. People who want things to be taken care of by others often slide into dependence. To my mind, anarchy is not supposed to be utopia.

I feel like the core feature of any genuine mutual aid system is the involvement beneficiaries have in the project. Mutual aid means you are not merely a customer. So instead of devising a grand scheme that can take care of everybody, what would be better would be to see everybody taking active roles in solving their own problems through their own particular societies.

“Secret societies” might be a bit over the top, but it certainly can’t be less exclusive than the corporate/government complex we have now. This allows for a diversity not just in mutual aid systems but in conceptions of what kind of aid is necessary or desirable. Whatever it is, the system has to get people invested in aiding fellow members on an intrinsic level for it to work at all. I don’t see any way of hoping to accomplish that without a set of mutual aid systems as diverse as the people needing them.