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Comment by noonespecial | Hacker News Reader

I've taken to kickstarting (et al) about $20 per month even if there's nothing I really want. Think of it as a tithe to a weird little religion. Lots of people more sane than I give a great deal more to churches and charities to make their communities better.

Why? Because I want to live in a world where people do the kinds of projects that kickstarter funds. It's better that way.

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Same here; there was recently a pay it forward thing going around social networks where you offer a gift of any value to 5 friends who sign up if they agree to do the same. All my gifts are sourced from the rewards of Kickstarter projects since that plays into the altruistic/community theme. There's also a guy who's written a script to randomly buy him presents from Amazon, which ties in a little with the per month budget for an investment in something random theme. It probably won't be long before someone does the same for KS.

I might agree however I've been burned twice already by Kickstarter projects. It's make me very gun shy.

However, I just got my Pebble watch and I'm very pleased. Might restart my interests.

I would be more willing if Kickstarter management was even slightly involved with failed KS projects. Their "It's not our fault" attitude makes me angry.

I think that's the wrong attitude - you shouldn't think of Kickstarter as shopping. I've funded sixty projects on KS, so far, and I don't keep track of which ones have succeeded. Okay, yeah, the Pebble was kinda expensive for a random lark. But usually I just kick in $5 to $25 dollars - less than I'd spend going out to dinner. And maybe, some months later, I get a surprise package with something cool in it. I feel good about that.

I think the critical mass conversion towards crowd-funding comes when you have some protection in place for failed projects. Once that happens, and "average" Joes start to accept the "I'll put money into whatever I want to see" potential, we can cut out a lot of toxic habits and leeches in society by replacing the "put money into product to make more money" with "put money into product because I want product".

I just did the maths and all, and it turns I've been spending approximately $30 a month on Kickstarter projectsfrom since I joined (to fund Andy Baio's Kind of Bloop) without even noticing it myself...

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