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Here's a story that while it may look superficial merits some discussion:

http://mashable.com/2011/08/12/jonathans-card-hacked-starbucks/

The gist of it is this: as you may or may not have heard, a guy named Jonathan Stark released his Starbucks card to the world to act as a large scale "take a penny, leave a penny" type deal. People take and or leave the money they wish. Despite this sort of thing being vulnerable to abuse, it's been rather successful.

Now a guy with the rather ironic name of Sam Odio (Spanish for "hate". Seriously.) has been stealing money from the card (a total of $625). And is selling the card on eBay. The kicker is that he is going to donate the money to charity. Odio has called the card venture "yuppies buying yuppies coffee" and that "helping a stranger find their next caffeine fix is not what we should be worried about in today’s world"

Now, I support charity as much as the next person, but one thing I support even more is personal boundaries and free will. Charity should come from within and what this guy is doing is stealing from people and acting like a holier than thou douchebag about it just because he has a "higher purpose". Even if there are better things people could be doing with their money, taking away their choices about it isn't the way to prove your point. Not to mention it opens up a whole can of worms as to if that is REALLY the best thing to do with the money (which charity is best? Which cause? It's the classic "Appeal to worse problems" fallacy)

Anyway, that's my opinion. I'd like to know what's yours.

A self righteous hacker, what a fucking shock.

Makes me wonder if Jonathan's Card social experiment is an experiment to find the biggest douche.

Chaotic Good (or Neutral with Good tendencies, more like) is all fun and games until Lawful Neutral sentences you to a stay in Ye Olde Buttfuckin' Prison.

I'm mystified as to why he expected anything else. It only takes one douchebag to ruin things.

That looks like Judge Hanover Fiste.

Ha ha ha!

Hangin's too good for him! Burnin's too good for him! He should be torn into little bitsy pieces and BURIED ALIIIIIIIVE!

...and now Starbucks has shut down the whole thing thanks to Odio's fraud:

http://mashable.com/2011/08/13/jonathans-card-shut-down/

...I guess the experiment just proved something everyone knew: several hundred people can and will contribute to do something nice...but all it takes is one asshole to cause it to all come tumbling down.

What a dick. So if I go rob an investment firm that caters to the wealthy but give the money to a charity of my choosing, does that make it okay? What if I rob the house of someone who is a jerk/homophobe/racist/whatever? This theoretical person would be bad, so all his stuff is free game, right?

Yeesh.

Someone sets up a big "Leave some money, take some money" bin on the counter at starbucks, lots of people participate, and you don't think someone is going to sit down, watch the bin, and when someone puts money in, walk up and talk some?

It's a "Leave some money, take some money" bin - it's not a "Only take some money under the following rules and conditions, 1) you won't do it often 2) you won't take much 3) you will honor the donation of others by using the money for whatever they felt its intended purpose was, even though everyone thinks of it differently, etc, etc, etc".

He didn't "steal" money, unless you also assume that the people who bought themselves a latte with it stole money.

It was a social experiment, and it ran its course with the predictable end.

There was no hacking - all they did was transfer funds from one card to another, which is perfectly legitimate according to starbucks TOS.

In fact, the only thing that was broken was starbuck rules about sharing cards - the original person who started the experiment was blatantly disregarding starbuck's terms of service for the card.

Moral of the story: Don't leave bins of money lying around where other human beings can get access to them and expect to be able to dictate how they use the bins of money.

Doesn't make him any less of a dick though

stienman said:

Yeesh.

Someone sets up a big "Leave some money, take some money" bin on the counter at starbucks, lots of people participate, and you don't think someone is going to sit down, watch the bin, and when someone puts money in, walk up and talk some?

It's a "Leave some money, take some money" bin - it's not a "Only take some money under the following rules and conditions, 1) you won't do it often 2) you won't take much 3) you will honor the donation of others by using the money for whatever they felt its intended purpose was, even though everyone thinks of it differently, etc, etc, etc".

He didn't "steal" money, unless you also assume that the people who bought themselves a latte with it stole money.

It was a social experiment, and it ran its course with the predictable end.

There was no hacking - all they did was transfer funds from one card to another, which is perfectly legitimate according to starbucks TOS.

In fact, the only thing that was broken was starbuck rules about sharing cards - the original person who started the experiment was blatantly disregarding starbuck's terms of service for the card.

Moral of the story: Don't leave bins of money lying around where other human beings can get access to them and expect to be able to dictate how they use the bins of money.

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Okay, I'll admit my robbing analogy was wrong. But you can't seriously absolve this guy based on the notion that the money was there to be taken. The idea was you get a cup of coffee, you give a cup of coffee. It was not "find a loophole, violate the original intent of the agreement, then be a smug self-righteous ass about it."

If it was "get a cup of coffee, give a cup of coffee"....why not just buy yourself a cup of coffee?

I guess I don't really see the point of this thing.

Tress said:

you can't seriously absolve this guy based on the notion that the money was there to be taken.

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I'm not excusing the guy. I'm asking, "Who really expected a different outcome?"

Am I being too cynical?

phil said:

If it was "get a cup of coffee, give a cup of coffee"....why not just buy yourself a cup of coffee?

I guess I don't really see the point of this thing.

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I guess it was for people who are really bad at managing their money, or "starving artists" who don't know when their next windfall will come in.

phil said:

If it was "get a cup of coffee, give a cup of coffee"....why not just buy yourself a cup of coffee?

I guess I don't really see the point of this thing.

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It's not referring to the same person. You know, like 'leave a penny/take a penny' isn't there so you break even. If you have the money, you buy two coffees: one for you, and you leave $4 on the card. If I'm short $4 one day, I use the card, and maybe in the future if I'm doing better, I add some cash to the card. It's like a pay-it-forward thing, not an IOU.

I dunno. Take a penny leave a penny makes more sense. If you're short a few cents or are going to get an annoying 5.99 you take a penny or two and at some other point leave a few yourself.

I feel like this is different. This is a luxury item, you know? I feel like this is one of those things that if you can't afford you just can't afford.

Like if this were some kind of food based thing, like a card that only worked on items that would be covered by food stamps or something, I'd be more behind it.

BTW, in regards to the "Appeal to worse problems" fallacy, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has read my mind:

If it's not nailed down, people will steal it. Money was left out there, vulnerable, and the inevitable happened. Happens every time people assume the best in others.

i like that the guy that took the money states he will donate the proceeds from his ebay auction to charity. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure he will.

Shannow said:

i like that the guy that took the money states he will donate the proceeds from his ebay auction to charity. Suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuure he will.

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If you look at the ebay auction it's set up as a charitable auction, which I believe means ebay makes sure the money goes where it's supposed to go. I could be wrong, but I thought that was something ebay did to help people set up charity auctions.

I thought ebay shut the auction down.

I am not surprise of the outcome (knew it was going to happen) but it is cool Johnathan did try it and people DO donate.

but like ANY society (no matter what world you live in) there will be a couple people that will abuse the system for their own gain.
Heck even a "close to utopian" Star Trek world, there are corruption (i.e. no worries for food, shelter, money, and healthcare etc etc)

Shannow said:

I thought ebay shut the auction down.

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They shut the first auction down because it broke the "one gift card per auction, one gift card auction at a time" rule.

The second auction is now closed, but the message says it was either closed by the person starting the auction or due to ebay violations - it doesn't say which.

His website said that if Jonathan asked, he'd remove the auction, but I don't see any updates suggesting that he took it down. So perhaps he did, or perhaps ebay took it down. I'm certain a lot of people complained about it to ebay, though.