His taking the money and auctioning it for charity DID make the experiment more interesting, but I understand the anger. Partially, it's the amount he took too

His taking the money and auctioning it for charity DID make the experiment more interesting, but I understand the anger. Partially, it's the amount he took took, as you say. $100 would have been more reasonable. I think it was also Sam's tone in his blog post. Perhaps buying strangers coffee is not as worthy as buying food for starving children, but it made people feel good. Sam essentially dismissed it. I think that's mean spirited. There's a lot of needs in the world, and different people are interested in different things. Do we really want to get into a debate over whether giving money to MSF is better than an animal shelter? Indeed, I can both donate to stop hunger AND buy a stranger a coffee.