If the money was donated this would just make this an alternative way to donate money to charity, the creator pocketing the money is necessary for this to be a social experiment.
I think the idea is to show that worthwhile things can be done with what seems like a small amount of money, otherwise potential donors may feel that their $10 can't make a measurable difference to a real person's outcome and will be less inclined to donate.
Ringfencing money like that would be very inefficient unless you can perfectly balance supply/demand beforehand. What happens if a ton of donors donate goats but then you find that nobody needs the goats anymore but you could really use the money for something boring like employment liability insurance?
They're taxes, period. There's no moral benefit to paying them in the same way there's no moral benefit to obeying traffic laws. It's not a charity as it's not voluntary. It's the cost of playing the game.
Your right I guess, I didn't think about that.
Having said that if I was going to donate that kind of money to something I'd probably just cut them a cheque rather than putting it through a website.
Guess it would have been nicer of the donator to send it in small increments instead so plausible deniability (or actual non detection) was more possible.
Because once you donate money, you have given it away, and it's gone. If you're expecting something in return you are trying to make a purchase, not a donation.
Punishment would involve having something further taken away. If they jailed people for donating, that would be punishment.
It's not the goal of the project, but I'm sure they are pretty much the only goal of the donation... Or do you think people would donate at all if there weren't any gifts?
It is not a donation, because you don't get chose not to pay. You get to choose where to send the money. I don't see how this couldn't work with a high portion of the money.
Yeah, this is like the chapter out of "Drive" where they tried paying people to give blood but ending up decreasing the number of blood givers... they'd rather feel charitable then earn money
reply