Has anyone...
#21
The yin to all this yang is having a situation where the consumer is to part with some of their money without being compelled. The whole "buy me a coffee" culture is really what *should* take over. The world where, oh ya know, we learn to value again things that are free. Crazy, right? Microtransaction culture used for altruism, and not for games or maintaining subscription to features in your e-car. We kinda have some of this with patreon and all the little donate buttons out there, but there's so, so, so much work to do.

Yall want nifty features, and if you paid money for them, they better be all the nifiter. But what if they aren't? Enter the sunken-cost fallacy. That thing that causes grandma to give all her money to the same slimeball every Sunday. That thing that causes your IT administrator to purchase all those MS Office activation codes. This is the thing that causes people to think that anything they didn't pay for is all somehow all on the same footing. I can hear the rebuttals now: "But Sprezz, we can just count the stars on github to weigh the merit of free things. It'll be in the reviews." To which I say great, let's channel that positivity into something tangible for the author rather than just good vibes.

I'll even invoke Peter Singer (72) for this discussion: anyone *not* doing their part to materially help the community is not just a useless oxygen thief, but is also evil. Singer argues that simply donating a few bucks to the jimmy fund is the barest of minimums, and we should really give a whole lot more if we are to rest easy at night. Anyone not giving at least something is just plain evil. (Of course government has a perverted version of this argument with respect to taxes.)

Coffee kicking in. Time to get busy.
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