Use Jonathan's card to buy yourself an iPad

>It was stated that this was a social experiment.

the phenomena of golden calf has been known for millennia. Condense enough value into one spot/artefact, and you'll get some people attracted to and mesmerized by it, the people who can't control themselves around it, coming close and touching it, not necessarily to privatize, just to feel and be around it and be associated/connected with it exactly like it happened with Odio. It is strange though that the triggering threshold for such behavior happened to be that low (ie. for anybody working in hi-tech and living in Bay Area) - iPad/$600 - that is surprising result of the experiment.

>Diverting the money to a more worthy (in his view) cause

there is big difference between diverting your own money from buying coffee/movies/etc to a supposedly more worthy cause (ie. act of charity) and diverting somebody else's money (such an act has different names and none of which is charity). How much of his own money he diverted to such a worthy cause?

I've seen a lot of hostility in this thread to the perceived egotism of this act. I've also seen some people who dislike that the donations were used for something other than their intended purpose. Since my initial reaction was that he's in the right here (accusations of high horse and such aside, I'd rather not go into that), I'm curious to hear people's reasoning on why they dislike this so much. So, some hypotheticals and questions...

1) What if it had been anonymous and "Ego free". Would you feel better about it if it were disconnected from status?

2) Most people would agree that giving to charity is better than giving a coffee (note I said charity, not Africa specifically. There can be some debate over whether aid helps or harms Africa, but I'm less interested in that now). If charity > coffee, why is this such a bad thing?

3) I understand the hostility to statements about "You should be doing charity instead" because there's always an element of hypocrisy to them, but if the statement is divorced from the person, isn't it correct? So why should there be so much hostility when it's put into practice in this case?

I'm not trying to judge anyone for their opinion here, I'm just curious about their reasoning since it differs from my own.

Congratulations. You broke Johnathan's Card. But more than that— I think you made a valuable point.

Lots of people who were exposed, maybe for the first time, to the idea of a stranger doing something nice for them for no reason, and then to the idea that they might then do something nice for a stranger in return, have had that illusion shattered. There is no act so charitable that somebody won't steal from it.

You take money from yuppies to give to charity. The people who run the charity take 10% off the top to pay the bills— they have children too, you know. When the food actually gets on the ground, local warlords come and take half for themselves.

The yuppies still drink coffee, the charity still pays its salaries, the warlords still try to kill each other, and children are still starving to death. The experiment has changed nothing— except that a few of those yuppies maybe believe in the idea of random acts of kindness just a little bit less.

Point well made.

No, I really don't think that it is disproportional. Sam Odio hasn't apologized let alone returned the money. In fact, he just tries to justify his actions. I would say it is likely that this is symptomatic of his ethical and moral attitude in general.