> Without enforcement of the social contract, society would quickly collapse
When you're dealing with strangers' money, an unspoken "social contract" is entirely inadequate. You need an explicit contract, real enforcement, and oversight. This is why charities have things like mission statements, operational guidelines, and independent audits, and why the law gets involved when there's misappropriation of funds. This is why we have things like Charity Navigator.
When you don't have those things, you get a situation like this -- funds get directed to causes the donors did not intend. As misappropriations go, this one was relatively tame; rather than giving coffee money to starving children, someone might use "feed the children" money to bomb a bus in the Middle East, or "stand up for the Constitution" money to fund McVeigh type domestic terrorism.
Some sort of abuse was inevitable with the way Jonathan's Card was set up. I'm sad that Sam chose to abuse it, since he's a valued member of this community and it sucks to see him alienate so many. But I'm also glad that he's the one who abused it, as many others would've actually bought themselves an iPad instead of sending the money on to charity.
When you're dealing with strangers' money, an unspoken "social contract" is entirely inadequate. You need an explicit contract, real enforcement, and oversight. This is why charities have things like mission statements, operational guidelines, and independent audits, and why the law gets involved when there's misappropriation of funds. This is why we have things like Charity Navigator.
When you don't have those things, you get a situation like this -- funds get directed to causes the donors did not intend. As misappropriations go, this one was relatively tame; rather than giving coffee money to starving children, someone might use "feed the children" money to bomb a bus in the Middle East, or "stand up for the Constitution" money to fund McVeigh type domestic terrorism.
Some sort of abuse was inevitable with the way Jonathan's Card was set up. I'm sad that Sam chose to abuse it, since he's a valued member of this community and it sucks to see him alienate so many. But I'm also glad that he's the one who abused it, as many others would've actually bought themselves an iPad instead of sending the money on to charity.