Navigating Economic Challenges Through Crowdfunding Platforms

16min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

This chapter explores the emergence of digital crowdfunding platforms post-2008 financial crisis, dissecting the shift towards online assistance mechanisms for individuals. It delves into the differences between project-based crowdfunding and charitable platforms, highlighting the connections with societal and economic shifts. The conversation also delves into the complexities of success and privilege within crowdfunding campaigns, reflecting on the societal reliance on such platforms amidst the absence of a robust social safety net.

Paris Marx is joined by Nora Kenworthy to discuss how people rely on GoFundMe to access healthcare and the further inequities that adds to an already deeply unequal healthcare system.

Nora Kenworthy is the author of Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare and an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington Bothell.

Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.

The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.

Also mentioned in this episode:

Nora is doing an online event with the Debt Collective on June 13.
GoFundMe bought many of its competitors through the 2010s.
In 2020, GoFundMe posted in a campaign it set up in response to Covid: “We’re in a growth industry: pain.”

Support the show