Infrastructure for mutual aid: why it always falls apart when it matters most

Every few years, a disaster hits — hurricane, earthquake, pandemic — and mutual aid networks spring up almost instantly. People cook meals, share supplies, organize shelter. The infrastructure forms in hours. And then, almost always, it frays. The group that was coordinating brilliantly in Week One develops internal conflict by Week Three. The person who was organizing logistics stops showing up. The money runs out. The people who need help most fall through the cracks as the network optimizes for people who already know how to ask. Is this a design failure? Can mutual aid infrastructure be built that scales and endures without becoming a bureaucracy? Or is there something inherent in radical horizontality that resists institutionalization — and is that resistance actually a feature, not a bug?