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

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

#111

Post by jjoske » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 4:42 AM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #47

oadam wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some countries in EU have 2% of income tax support, i.e. If you are a tax payer in Lithuania and would like to support the development of non-profit/school/academy or sport club, you can do so by transferring 2% of your income tax to the administrating enterprise. And you can change/donate it every year.

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).

Why does the military need a special exception compared to the orphanage down the road?

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

#112

Post by DanBC » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 6:00 AM UTC

gravypod wrote: post #108

DanBC wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How are they supposed to get more people to donate blood?

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

#113

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

NeutronBoy wrote: post #110

jessriedel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fair enough. Then you can read my comment as "The term 'gamification' covers two very different concepts, one of which is very constructive...".

Also, there seems to be a big difference between (1) "you completed the errand of picking up the milk; you get 10 million super points and this e-Trophy" and (2) "here are the real-world implications of your actions".

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

#114

Post by boomlinde » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 1:45 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #101

boomlinde wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not saying that the conclusion is wrong, but that the reasoning is, if it assumes that a government knows the most efficient way to do something.

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

#115

Post by hobarrera » Wed, Jul 01, 2015, 9:21 PM UTC

minot wrote: post #30

danieltillett wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this approach is the areas of need rarely aligns with areas of desire. What happens to those areas that need resources that nobody really cares about?

> What happens to those areas that need resources that nobody really cares about? This is why taxes cannot be donations. Indeed, they are not donations. I remember the people at institutional giving at my old college say that nobody wants their name on a parking lot.

If nobody cares about a given area, why is it being maintained?