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Without enforcement of the social contract, society would quickly collapse, or transform from something very different from it is today. We all want to believ

by DevX101 15y ago

Without enforcement of the social contract, society would quickly collapse, or transform from something very different from it is today. We all want to believe that people are all good, but the sad truth is we're not...at least, not all of us. And it only takes a few renegades to disrupt this whole thing we call society in the absence of enforcement. I don't ascribe any particular moral judgment on Odio. He was a part of the experiment and his actions only confirmed my belief that any exploitable system will be exploited. An interesting additional outcome from this social experiment to me was how 'the community' reacted to Odio. Like adultery, what Odio did was one of those rules that he wasn't supposed to do, but he did anyways. We can't throw people in jail for cheating on their wives. So what do we do and have done for thousands of years? We shame them. And that's exactly what's been happening to Odio here and I'm assuming on Facebook too.

lotharbot 15y ago
> Without enforcement of the social contract, society would quickly collapse When you're dealing with strangers' money, an unspoken "social contract" is entirely inadequate. You need an explicit contract, real enforcement, and oversight. This is why charities have things like mission statements, operational guidelines, and independent audits, and why the law gets involved when there's misappropriation of funds. This is why we have things like Charity Navigator. When you don't have those things, you get a situation like this -- funds get directed to causes the donors did not intend. As misappropriations go, this one was relatively tame; rather than giving coffee money to starving children, someone might use "feed the children" money to bomb a bus in the Middle East, or "stand up for the Constitution" money to fund McVeigh type domestic terrorism. Some sort of abuse was inevitable with the way Jonathan's Card was set up. I'm sad that Sam chose to abuse it, since he's a valued member of this community and it sucks to see him alienate so many. But I'm also glad that he's the one who abused it, as many others would've actually bought themselves an iPad instead of sending the money on to charity.

by DevX101 15y ago

lotharbot 15y ago

> Without enforcement of the social contract, society would quickly collapse When you're dealing with strangers' money, an unspoken "social contract" is entirely inadequate. You need an explicit contract, real enforcement, and oversight. This is why charities have things like mission statements, operational guidelines, and independent audits, and why the law gets involved when there's misappropriation of funds. This is why we have things like Charity Navigator. When you don't have those things, you get a situation like this -- funds get directed to causes the donors did not intend. As misappropriations go, this one was relatively tame; rather than giving coffee money to starving children, someone might use "feed the children" money to bomb a bus in the Middle East, or "stand up for the Constitution" money to fund McVeigh type domestic terrorism. Some sort of abuse was inevitable with the way Jonathan's Card was set up. I'm sad that Sam chose to abuse it, since he's a valued member of this community and it sucks to see him alienate so many. But I'm also glad that he's the one who abused it, as many others would've actually bought themselves an iPad instead of sending the money on to charity.