Whether Judged by Public Benefit or by Business, Mutual Aid Is Not a Good Startup Direction — Only Idealism Consoles Us

In the years of running KangAi Commune, I have come to see more and more clearly: what we chose may not be a good startup direction.

From a business point of view, it is hard. Because what we offer is not a product that immediately brings people joy and satisfaction, but something people hope they will never have to use.

When a person is healthy and their family is safe, mutual aid feels very far away. Every contribution is easily understood as paying out again and again; if the rules are a little strict, the platform seems heartless; if the cost rises a little, there are complaints. And if you take part for years and nothing ever happens, you may even feel you have “paid in for all these years for nothing.”

But once illness actually strikes, everything changes. At that point, people suddenly wish they had joined earlier and with more coverage, wish the rules were more lenient toward them, wish for as much help as possible. And that is where a great many disputes and conflicts arise.

When you need it, it seems supremely important; when you do not, it seems optional.

This contradiction is almost inherent to the mutual-aid industry.

Even from the public-benefit angle, this is not a direction that easily wins applause. Because genuinely responsible mutual aid is not simply “helping whoever is in difficulty.” It must have rules, boundaries, joining conditions and waiting periods, and it will inevitably have to refuse some pleas that move the heart.

Helping one person may earn you a word of thanks; refusing someone who does not meet the rules but is genuinely struggling may earn you long-term resentment and complaints.

So we now understand that the difficulties KangAi Commune faces are not only technical, financial or operational. Deeper still is how to confront a very real contradiction in human nature: everyone wants a mechanism of mutual help to exist in society, yet when they themselves do not need help for the moment, it is hard for them to keep paying for others over the long term.

That is how human nature is, and it cannot be changed. The point is not to complain, but to think about how to face reality.

What we need to do is design the rules as fairly as possible, keep the accounts transparent, explain clearly where every sum of money goes, explain clearly why we help and why we refuse, and let every participant gradually understand:

The value of mutual aid does not lie in how much I paid in today and how much I got back, but in a group of people being willing, at a time when none of them knows who will meet with difficulty first, to maintain together a mechanism that says “if one day it is my turn, someone will be willing to help me.”

Choosing this direction may have meant, from the very start, choosing a very hard road.

Now, keeping something so inherently full of contradictions, and so hard to build trust in, going for the long term — that in itself may be KangAi Commune’s greatest value.