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Exactly. The article is not saying it's insane to allow Kickstarter donations, it's insane that current law makes it just fine to donate to a risky venture but

Exactly. The article is not saying it's insane to allow Kickstarter donations, it's insane that current law makes it just fine to donate to a risky venture but not to invest and get a chance to share in the venture's upside.

macroresilience 13y ago
author of the post here - this is exactly what I meant.
- lake99 13y ago
  Thanks for confirming the clarification. I'm all for power-to-the-people.
- lake99 13y ago
  I wouldn't have interpreted it the way I did, had you written "I have nothing against the kickstarter approach. But when individuals are allowed to collectively donate millions to dollars to ventures without any ownership, it is insane to bar them from funding the same projects and receiving an ownership stake in return." This retains most of your words, but what you find insane is less ambiguous now.
nknighthb 13y ago
The two are utterly different. A donation necessarily means you no longer have the money, and will not be getting it back. Even a purchase generally means you wont get it back (that is, under normal conditions, I'm not going to get $100 selling a gadget I bought for $100). This sort of (non-)"risk" is understood by everyone, and there has never been an epidemic of people losing their retirements because they donated to a cause or purchased a gadget, even causes and gadgets that turn out to be outright scams. An investment is not supposed to be a permanent and total loss of capital. On the contrary, the intent is to get more out than you put in. People depend on their investments for their financial futures. And there is a well-documented history of vast numbers of people losing everything to bad investments, especially investments pushed by scam artists from the small to the very large (like Madoff and Stanford).
- positivejam 13y ago
  Fair enough. I don't actually have a settled opinion on the matter. I was, however, pretty sure the author was being misrepresented as being against Kickstarter-style donations, and wanted to clarify.

macroresilience 13y ago

author of the post here - this is exactly what I meant.

lake99 13y ago
Thanks for confirming the clarification. I'm all for power-to-the-people.
lake99 13y ago
I wouldn't have interpreted it the way I did, had you written "I have nothing against the kickstarter approach. But when individuals are allowed to collectively donate millions to dollars to ventures without any ownership, it is insane to bar them from funding the same projects and receiving an ownership stake in return." This retains most of your words, but what you find insane is less ambiguous now.

nknighthb 13y ago

The two are utterly different. A donation necessarily means you no longer have the money, and will not be getting it back. Even a purchase generally means you wont get it back (that is, under normal conditions, I'm not going to get $100 selling a gadget I bought for $100). This sort of (non-)"risk" is understood by everyone, and there has never been an epidemic of people losing their retirements because they donated to a cause or purchased a gadget, even causes and gadgets that turn out to be outright scams. An investment is not supposed to be a permanent and total loss of capital. On the contrary, the intent is to get more out than you put in. People depend on their investments for their financial futures. And there is a well-documented history of vast numbers of people losing everything to bad investments, especially investments pushed by scam artists from the small to the very large (like Madoff and Stanford).

positivejam 13y ago
Fair enough. I don't actually have a settled opinion on the matter. I was, however, pretty sure the author was being misrepresented as being against Kickstarter-style donations, and wanted to clarify.