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Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

independent.co.uk

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Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#101

Post by paulmd »

boomlinde wrote: post #62
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course - if governments could raise funds by donations they would not tax. I hate taxes, but I hate the absence of taxes more :)

Are you saying that if there are more effective ways of raising money, governments necessarily know about them? I'm on your side with regards to taxing, but governments are slow-moving beasts that are often controlled by ideological moves rather than practical ones.

Indeed, they already do it right now:

http://www.fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html

They obviously don't take in anything more than a trivial amount of money. If you think that people would donate an equivalent amount of money if their taxes were eliminated - then you must have an awful lot of faith in people's inherent generosity in the face of their own self-interest. The economically optimal decision for any one person is to not give, but in the aggregate that means we don't have funding for infrastructure, research, etc.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#102

Post by minot »

cdcarter wrote: post #80
tomjen3 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because we should budget for the cost of actual programs, and not have to guess based on how much various constituencies might allocate their tax dollars.

I wouldn't mind if gasoline tax went only towards road maintenance.

We should move carefully though because I am sure hard earmarking can be disastrous if taken all the way.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#103

Post by ceejayoz »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
ceejayoz wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Centralizing this data is a very dangerous thing and could have un-intended consequences for the donors. Such as...?

Let's see: - your blood contains your DNA, so you not only give out something to help others, you also give out your biological finger-print - insurance companies might use lab results + identifying info to deny insurance - your blood contains information on your heritage And I'm sure there are many more examples like that. Maybe I'm over-sensitive to data collected for no particular purpose but NL has a pretty bad r…

> your blood contains your DNA, so you not only give out something to help others, you also give out your biological finger-print

Anyone who wants your DNA is going to have an easier time stealing it from your coffee cup in the garbage than a blood bank.

> insurance companies might use lab results + identifying info to deny insurance

Insurance companies in the US are no longer allowed to deny coverage for preexisting conditions under the ACA, and are already generally entitled to review your lab results as part of your contract with them.

> your blood contains information on your heritage

So does your birth certificate.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#104

Post by danieltillett »

boomlinde wrote: post #62
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course - if governments could raise funds by donations they would not tax. I hate taxes, but I hate the absence of taxes more :)

Are you saying that if there are more effective ways of raising money, governments necessarily know about them? I'm on your side with regards to taxing, but governments are slow-moving beasts that are often controlled by ideological moves rather than practical ones.

Governments have tried plenty of ways of raising money other than tax (inflation is the classic one), but I don't think we have found a better way. While governments are not nimble, they have had a long history of testing alternative ways of paying for the things other than taxes and so far all have proved worse in the long term.

The one exception to all of this is war where people will effectively donate by buying things like war bonds or agreeing to charge non-market rates for goods, but as a solution for taxation war is hardly ideal. As I said I hate taxes, but I hate no taxes more.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#105

Post by nicky0 »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #55
tomjen3 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is very good, at the same time 2% is pretty much nothing. Why not make it so that 50% is payers choice? (I wouldn't make it 100% only because there are too many people who wouldn't want to fund the military).

According to a slapdash google search, the 2015 federal income due to taxes is $3.9 trillion, and about half of that comes from income tax. 2% of that is $20 million dollars. I want to say that that's not nothing, but the Rosetta equipment alone cost €220 million. I'm not even sure how much of an impact $20m would have if you spread it across, e.g., the New York public school system.

I hope you don't work in a math related field.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#106

Post by gravypod »

It makes me sad to see people who donate or contribute to charity for popularity. The idea behind giving blood--or other community services--is to help society as a hole, not your ego. Charity should not be flashed like a status symbol.

If a charity is wasting time and money developing systems to stroke your ego, they should just skip the step and sell themselves to Fleshlight. Their time and money should be spent on improving the lives of those in need, not by stroking off some people.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#107

Post by DanBC »

gravypod wrote: post #106

It makes me sad to see people who donate or contribute to charity for popularity. The idea behind giving blood--or other community services--is to help society as a hole, not your ego. Charity should not be flashed like a status symbol. If a charity is wasting time and money developing systems to stroke your ego, they should just skip the step and sell themselves to Fleshlight. Their time and money should be spent on…

This is a simple and cheap method to get more people to male the altruistic[1] step of donating blood.

It's not much fun; it's sort of awkward for some people; we could probably do woth more people donating blood.

The blood banks have a choice: spend money on tv ads, or spend money doing this. Why are ads okay and this terrible?

[1] I'm not interested in philosophy of altruism.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#108

Post by gravypod »

DanBC wrote: post #107
gravypod wrote: post #106

It makes me sad to see people who donate or contribute to charity for popularity. The idea behind giving blood--or other community services--is to help society as a hole, not your ego. Charity should not be flashed like a status symbol. If a charity is wasting time and money developing systems to stroke your ego, they should just skip the step and sell themselves to Fleshlight. Their time and money should be spent on…

This is a simple and cheap method to get more people to male the altruistic[1] step of donating blood. It's not much fun; it's sort of awkward for some people; we could probably do woth more people donating blood. The blood banks have a choice: spend money on tv ads, or spend money doing this. Why are ads okay and this terrible? [1] I'm not interested in philosophy of altruism.

Who said ads are okay? Wasting money that you promise to put towards a goal on something else is, in my mind, wrong.

People already know donating blood is a good and charitable act. We don't need someone to tell us that.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#109

Post by pavel_lishin »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #55
tomjen3 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that is very good, at the same time 2% is pretty much nothing. Why not make it so that 50% is payers choice? (I wouldn't make it 100% only because there are too many people who wouldn't want to fund the military).

According to a slapdash google search, the 2015 federal income due to taxes is $3.9 trillion, and about half of that comes from income tax. 2% of that is $20 million dollars. I want to say that that's not nothing, but the Rosetta equipment alone cost €220 million. I'm not even sure how much of an impact $20m would have if you spread it across, e.g., the New York public school system.

Ugh, well, that was probably my most embarrassing comment. That's what I get for trying to math right before going to sleep.

Re: Blood donors in Sweden get a text message when their blood saves someone's life

#110

Post by NeutronBoy »

jessriedel wrote: post #71
SCAQTony wrote: post #4

The Gamification of saving lives! f k yeah! - "I AM LEVEL 3, yesssssss." (3-lives saved)

I think this is importantly different. What's usually called gamification is when you create a ticker/counter/award and convince a person to pursue that as a goal even though it has no other real-world importance . This basically hi-jacks the natural good feeling people get when they accomplish an intermediate goal (on the way to an intrinsic goal). It's like the fact that I can make up a goal (flicking a folded piec…

> What's usually called gamification is when you create a ticker/counter/award and convince a person to pursue that as a goal even though it has no other real-world importance.

I'm not sure this is right - there are plenty of examples where gamification is being used for real-life tasks. Things like recycling, exercising, dieting, shopping, etc. Look at how many todo list apps give you points for completing tasks.

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