Among its greatest modern hits is “gofundme.com”. Crowdsourcing social policy! It’s the New New Deal—-we took everything great about helping the unfortunate, but without any of the pesky oversight, collective participation, democratic processes, or predictability of your grandparents New Deal. Welcome to the Welfare State II - The Reapportioning! This new social fabric is fresh, capricious, and heavily favors those who bring an existing marketing and outreach apparatus…y’know, the needy people with a solid PR firm.

Public school teacher can’t afford treatment for their cancer? Go Fund Them! Favorite politician indicted for criminal fraud and campaign finance violations for paying for their previous indictment’s legal fees using campaign donations? Go Fund Them! Local dive bar threatened with closure unless they install flushable toilets in the restrooms? Go Fund Them! Single mother of three facing another night in the cold without enough to eat? Our thoughts go out to them, maybe if their mother can pass a urine screen and remain at a single address long enough to fill out the requisite forms and has successfully completed their probation on that loitering charge then they might get a few bucks from Uncle Sam…you never know, because with Go Fund Me anything is possible!

That's exactly the thing, get people to hyper focus on the individual and they miss the forest for the trees.