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Comment by ohthehugemanate | Hacker News Reader

I think you would really enjoy the Nautilus article about Game Theory of anonymous philanthropy:

https://nautil.us/larry-david-and-the-game-theory-of-anonymo...

The opening call out is pretty great, too. Ever see the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry's big donation is upstaged by Ted's anonymous donation?

Visible philanthropy is not a simple system of rewards. It's much more interesting than that.

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I remember that episode!

I think it'd still work - you'd just have to tweaked it a bit - could definitely have the list ordered with most patriotic "anonymous" tax contributors listed in order and then reward the first three non-anonymous highest tax contributors with the full 'bio'/backstory in the magazine spread.

When I worked for what was the fastest growing public publisher in London over thirty years ago, salespeople actually shared their tax slips to boast. "Super tax" was the euphemisms for how much was calculated you needed to have deducted from your payroll every time you hit a campaign out the park and increased your tax offices estimate of your annual return. Which we did. Often. See the Guinness records book for the PGA tour guide of'93 which was the apotheosis and the end of that lark. (Almost all advertising it weighed six pounds or something crazy but quite sane compared with the first dollar points paid to direct sales)

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