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.
It's like a normal person giving $100 to charity. Wouldn't it be cool if you could move the needle on vulnerable children with pocket change? (I'm not downplaying his charity, just putting it in perspective)
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.
Why though? What do you forsee the issue being with where the money could be going?
If Jason is recommending a way to donate to the project, who cares where it goes? If he puts it straight in his pocket and uses it to buy pizza or a computer game, it's still serving its purpose as far as I'm concerned. I have donated, and will do so again, and I'm perfectly happy with the money being used that way.
In a sense, for me, it's a thank you for the work thus far, not an payment for more work.
I imagine many see this differently, so I'm interested to hear some other opinions.
Ah, interesting. My assumption is that "just give it back to people" would entirely sidestep the question of how to spend the funds, but I suppose it suffers from the https://xkcd.com/927/ problem ;)
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 didn't measure materialism, and very poorly measured generosity.
They had some of the participants journal what they were grateful for, they paid all the participants, and they suggested that participants make a supposedly anonymous donation of cash to an unknown cause.
Keeping the money is supposedly materialism. No, it is not. Spending the money on frivolous status symbols might be materialism, but that wasn't measured. Keeping the money long-term, or spending it on something of importance, is financially responsible. Giving the money to an unknown cause (might even be an offensive cause) is foolhardy.
It is a ridiculously small amount of money though. You are probably right it is being wasted and misused, but that is half of kickstarters. It is par for the course when donating to a non-charity, it is trust and this guy is eccentric and weird. I think people have unrealistic expectations in this situation.
When you donate money you arguably "purchase" the good feeling of doing something "good" and also social validation if you choose to make your donation public.
I think it's a great idea to entice more revenue by giving an option (a hoody) for people who are not interested in "purchasing" the above.
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