Whenever I go through a toll bridge, I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me. I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all. For the Starbucks card, I would love to live in a society where this could work. Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin (i.e., drain the account) for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help (i.e., go to a web site, auth through hacker news, and then you get the image -- then it is tied to your HN identity).
For a more practical membership-share or coffee-club type of set up restrictions make sense...but in this case I think the anonymity of it all is the interesting part — seeing the behavior patterns emerge naturally and anonymously will be very telling.
I've always seen karma as more of a net effect than a mystical thing.
In practical terms, paying the toll of the person behind you may not directly propagate to tolls being paid. However, the recipients are going to be just that much happier or less stressed out, and are likely going to pass that mood along to the people they interact with in some way.
It may only make a small, localized part of the world a tiny fraction of a percent better, but it adds up.
I think it was Steven Covey who wrote somewhere about the trim tab on a giant ship's rudder. It's expensive/hard to build a motor that can turn the rudders on a giant container ship directly while it's in motion, but all it takes is a little mini-flap on the edge of the giant rudder.
> I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me
In what country/state/city? Is that legal? In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters because that robs the city of fines. But maybe it's not a concern for tolls?
> I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all.
At most, it would only reach exactly the car behind you. If that driver decides to pay the toll anyway (or the attendant secretly pockets the additional payment), the extra payment would be surely be swallowed.
Whoa. That's odd. I think it should be illegal for the government to rely / depend on illegal behavior to make money. Otherwise, it seems like a conflict of interest in that there is no incentive to tackle the root cause of crime anymore.
I knew someone who got a parking ticket because he filled his meter. All the cars next to him that didn't bother paying in the first place got nothing. We guessed that the expiring electronic meter signaled the nearest enforcement patrol, and they didn't bother to check neighboring meters that didn't send the "expired" signal.
Some company in the Gold Coast (originally it was the city council, but they stopped, so someone else took up the slack) hires gold-bikini clad girls (called "Meter Maids") to put money into parking meters that are just about to expire. And leave an ad on your windshield. But then, it's a tourist city.
My wife works at a Starbucks with a drive-thru and says that the chain reaction frequently persists until the line is emptied; the longest such chain was around twenty cars.
Thanks for your input, and perhaps for paying my bridge toll ;)
You wrote:
"Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin it for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help."
I see where you're coming from, but I believe that A) nobody (with the possible exception of Starbucks) can ruin this, and B) the solution to the bad egg problem is to be more open, not more controlling.
A while ago I was toying with the idea of making a BitCoin<->SBUX automated exchanger for fun, since card transactions are free and could be automated relatively easily. Never did get around to it. Also, there's a rather large scammy underside to BitCoin that would probably arbitrage the hell out of it.
Interesting experiment in that the image is public with no signup/restriction to get at it. You would need to have a continuous stream of new "pay-it-forward" users to add money on the card, no? There are lots of coffee drinkers in the world... Wasn't there something in the news not too long ago about an investment firm that ran this way? :)
> Wasn't there something in the news not too long ago about an investment firm that ran this way? :)
Only if there's also a continuous stream of people who are drinking without paying. If, out of a sense of community responsibility, people pay in close to what they drink (or a little bit more), then this system works.
Yes, but that is kind of what posting the image without a barrier to entry kind of guarantees, no? I guess that is the 'experiment'.. It would be more interesting if there were two cards, one public, one restricted to HN members or some other subset of 'public'.
The balance just went from $0 to $40 - awful nice of whoever did it. I'm a big fan of this idea - put in $5 and you can help out someone who you've probably never met!
Being able to afford something and having enough change in the pockets is not necessarily the same. Plus, I guess a coffee you got for free because of the kindness of a stranger might taste sweeter than your regular venti.
I'm really not trying to be critical of other people's lifestyles (and I like the idea behind Jonathan's Card), but when it comes down to it I would want to be able to educate those people that they are living outside of their means rather than enable them.
If you're living paycheck to paycheck and buying Starbucks every morning, that's definitely part of your problem. I understand and fully appreciate paying a bit more for a quality product, but when it comes down to it, being able to start a savings and plan for your future is more important than enjoying a better cup of coffee in the morning. It's directly analagous to buying a car that's out of your price range (say, a Lexus when you're only bringing in $35,000 a year pre-tax) and struggling to pay the note on it every month. You really can live with the cheaper product, and in the long run it may do you a world of good.
Am I wrong? I'd like to see some other people's input on this idea.
You're not wrong about what they should do, it just has no bearing on what they do do. Given the choice between short term pleasure or long term pleasure for a short term sacrifice, most choose the former rather than the latter. Being able to delay pleasure is a skill many people just don't have.
You don't get to define how other people say what they can and can't afford or how they define the term afford. Many people don't use that word like you're using it. Afford to many people means do I have a few extra bucks in my pocked right this moment; it doesn't matter if they won't next week.
It would be cool if something like this could be done for cheap microprocessor boards so people who can't afford to start with embedded development can be helped by others.
This is a really cool experiment. Coffee seems like the perfect use case since it's awkward to exploit, in that you're not going to buy $100 worth of coffee, just because the card has $100 on it. But what about other physical goods, like Barnes & Nobles, HEB, Home Depot?
That was me. One latte plus $25 worth of food for two homeless guys outside. Turns out they didn't want any of it. I think I might've insulted them by bringing them food that they hadn't asked for. :/
This is a pretty great counterpoint to people who see something like this and immediately think of those who want to 'game the game'. Not that the exception proves the rule, but altruism does (in my opinion) beget altruism, good on you Sam.
Or maybe they weren't homeless? Giving unsolicited food to homeless people is sort of like asking a woman when the baby is due. It's also important to remember that they may be homeless but many homeless people still have their pride and feel awful about having to ask for handouts, let alone have people randomly take pity on them.
I've lived in downtown San Diego for a while, and I've taken to just getting to know some of the homeless people who hang around the 7-11 by my apartment and buying food for them when they ask me.
That being said, you did a good thing by trying :)
I once questioned the food our church sends out to the homeless, but it turns out that sunny-d and vienna sausages are, seriously, pretty much the only thing they'll accept.
With a taste like that in food, I'm not surprised your latte and (excellent, I'm sure) Starbucks sandwich fell on stony ground.
Good sentiment though. May karma follow you throughout the day.
It would be really fun to combine this kind of point of sale reward with games or puzzles or tasks, sort of like mechanical Turk combined with OKCupid or wufoo.
Cash prizes are less interesting for this kind of thing. (various studies)
>Cash prizes are less interesting for this kind of thing.
I've read the same, but I don't believe it. For example people will say that fame is more important than money, but I would argue fame leads to more work, or more free stuff which in turn leads to money or more money than a set cash incentive. Or the case where people do things for points, but when those points are redeemable for physical items or discounts again this leads right back to some sort of cash savings. I think it always go back to some sort of monetary incentive.
I read in a recent Wired UK article that some banks have opted to pay a sum of money to a charity of their employee's choice, rather than paying the employee a full bonus - the idea being they've found this to be a better motivator for employees. Though admittedly it's also good publicity for the banks running such schemes.
Such a simple and wonderful idea; it brightened my Sunday. (Edit: I wonder how soon it will take SBX to decide that this is a vulnerability in their mobile app and change something that will break this.)
It really doesn't seem that much of a "vulnerability" actually. The only way to get a picture is if you get ahold of the victim's phone, or they willingly give it up to you.
If you get ahold of the victim's phone, the victim has bigger problems (NFC, e-mail, saved passwords, etc.).
I don't believe you can, since Starbucks lets you use your card for any purchase. That said, even if you could, why restrict it? He mentions that the point of this is to be "an experiment in social sharing of physical goods", so making it something purely built on trust makes the experiment exciting and worthy. If someone does abuse it, then that's just a data point in the experiment; but, if it continues to be replenished, that's a neat observation and a certain +1 for human nature.
Looks like a bad apple or two has helped take the over $50 that was on it an hour or so ago down to $0. I don't see a normal pattern of withdrawing small amounts of money for coffee, that's for sure.
Although the bit about paying it forward and social sharing is a great idea on its own, I think I'm a tad more excited that he actually made an API for this. That's seriously awesome.
Hmm, I think posting the value of the card affects the data points. I understand why it needs to be done, but my thinking is that if nobody knows how much is on there it leaves it less prone to outright abuse.
If the card suddenly gets a $100 recharge I'm sure it will be abused a lot more. Maybe that's part of the experiment, but I'd like to see what people do in general without that knowledge.
EDIT: or maybe even just a "this card has more than <insert cost of minimum item>" so that people know it can be used, but not how many times.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit. One the one hand, last week some jerk saw a $50 balance and spent the whole thing in one shot.
On the other hand, people need to know when there is money on the card if they are thinking about walking down to a sbux to get a coffee.
I might try the "there's more than $10 on the card right now". I've also experimented with delaying the reloaded messages, and doling out the money more directly by asking who wants a coffee.
Folks who respond get the update if they're quick. We'll see what happens, but I believe that there is a sustainable way to handle it.
How about putting everything in units of coffee? "There is at least 1 coffee on me" etc. "5 coffees were just added to me". This might take the emphasis off the amount of money on the card and onto the giving and receiving of coffee.
It would add a level of social obligation. You could go further and require a tweet explaining the purchase. You could even add a little homily about good manners and not being greedy to the explanatory text.
I think you are doing a very interesting experiment with new financial entities, and I'm curious to see where this leads.
The homily sounds like a good idea; that's been shown to actually deter some in the past.
To the other points: how would you go about mandating a photo or any other form of interaction from the purchaser? Jonathan has his card picture posted on the website–Starbucks simply accepts that photo as payment, there's no authorization process in the middle where Jonathan could selectively let some use it while disallowing others.
As a demonstration of the possible, using an image is in the category of Minimum Viable Product, the more sophisticated product would of necessity be an APP that hooked into the existing API and would only show a valid payment code if the Conditions Of Use were met.
This could be a web-app or it could be a native one.
As of the time of this post, ~8:10PM Pacific, "jerk" has been used a total of 6 times in this thread - 5 of which are owned by you! ;-) I write this because this particular comment, for me, sends a negative vibe about you. By no means am I trying to question your intentions or character, but a different choice of word would go a long way.
Now, for the reason I actually wrote the comment: This should be expected behavior. It's quite possible that "jerk" actually needs the help more than the person who gets the one coffee. It's equally viable to assume s/he is simply taking advantage of the system. In the bigger picture, I think these dynamics are completely expected. Would you call the guy that gives $50 or $100 a jerk as well? Either way, it's an experiment, and I wouldn't expect it, given a proper sampling, to deviate much from what we see in society as a whole.
I'm kind of playing devil's advocate here and kind of not: How can you justify spending $n to buy coffee for someone with a smartphone instead of donating $n to someone with fewer resources and greater needs?
just loaded $50 on the card, bought 10+ coffees for tech caffeine addicts, got a sweet tweet because I am looking for a tech co-founder for my funded cleantech startup. thinking outside of the box for recruiting... just saying. Oh, and if anyone is interested in joining wa.tt email me, james@wa.tt
this is an interesting concept. Retweet people, who added money to the card, with an advertisement or announcement of their choice. Only issue I see is people loading the card and just spending it on themselves.
Maybe they have to tweet you the advertisement, and then you can retweet, so you get more exposure in their twitter stream as well.
Fair point. My goal is to figure out the dynamics of social giving in this fashion and create a similar sustainable model around items that are less "luxury" than coffee.
For example, I can imaging people paying for other people's groceries or medicine in a similar manner. Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems worth trying.
I don't go to Starbucks, but I just loaded up $10 because I'd really like to see this "succeed", whatever that means. It's gone already, so I guess the experiment is working? :P
Thanks for the response. My question wasn't really directed at you—I can see all kinds of ways you could justify the project, including just curiosity. My question was for the people who are putting money on the card.
I hope one of your other ideas works! Good luck! But I suspect a big part of the impetus behind the contributions is a feeling of reciprocity, which is a different impulse from charity.
You could say that about almost anything. "How can you justify commenting on HN, when the money earned in the equivalent amount of time wasted here could save n Nigerians from starvation?" You can't, not really. But Jonathan's card still is one of the more ethical ways of spending money, so I'm all for it.
I comment on HN because I enjoy it. But I suspect that some people add money to Jonathan's Card because it gives them a feeling of virtue. I'd like to interfere with that feeling.
Honestly, why? You can't scold everyone into "real" virtuous behavior, so why not give them a taste of what it feels like and see if they can get hooked?
Do you believe that people putting money on this card would actually donate it towards a more deserving end?
I (think I) understand your goal here, but ultimately I think what you're doing is either ineffective in or outright harmful towards achieving it.
Taking that logic to its natural end - I should be living a meager existence, eating and buying only what is necessary for my own continued survival, and donating any surplus to people who don't even have subsistence level living standards (and there are a lot of said people).
But do I really need to explain why that is undesirable, or why most people in the world don't do this?
I totally agree. The sbux site and card don't support this directly, but I think I have a way to achieve this manually that involves requesting a coffee before you can know how much is on the card. We'll see!
Yes, unfortunately I do get the rewards. I get a free coffee for every 15 purchased. I figured that the free coffees would accrue to the card itself and therefore every 16th person would get a free coffee. As it turns out, sbux mails free coffee coupons to me:
I'm not sure how to redistribute them fairly, but I was thinking that I could at least pass them out at my local store. However, doing so is expressly forbidden and my name is on the postcards.
Keep the coupons? Seriously. I mean, you set this up, you have funded it, etc.
Also, Maybe a good idea to ensure auto-reload is not setup on the card! I dont know that it is, but if it is you could be out a significant amount of money. Looking at your API calls I dont see where it has been auto-reloaded.
If you're willing to throw the dice a bit, and you wouldn't consider this a tainting factor (no sarcasm), contact Starbucks. There's a distinct possibility they may work with you. Depending on how you judge the risk, you may want to do this anyhow, lest they simply shut the card down entirely in the near future. There is of course the risk that contacting them may cause that result sooner, but... in the long term you're probably better off contacting them anyhow because if they're going to shut it down when you bring it to their attention, they're going to shut it down when they discover it anyhow. I think you still come out ahead in the case where you contact them and they end up not shutting it down when they would have if you didn't contact them.
Otherwise, you're "stuck"; be open about it (as you are), and use them or not. I wouldn't hold it against you either way, personally.
Good shout - and Starbucks know good press so they're likely to keep it open when they see how much attention this project's getting.
It seems strange that they don't just give you the free ones direct to your card - I guess it's down to the psychology of receiving a free actual physical thing, rather than there just being a slightly longer delay between needing to top up your card.
Absolutely. If you like social experiments, I could think of few that had more potential for so little risk/outlay. You might get some truly fascinating stories that you could share on your blog, or you might hear one tiny nugget of information that would be worth your while. At the very least, you'd give a homeless person something truly worthwhile along with a welcome hot cup of coffee.
I tried to load it, but all I got was: "This recipient does not accept payments from non-U.S. PayPal accounts." (I'm Swiss)
Why would Starbucks restrict from where they get their money?
Hm, I didn't feel like giving *$ my email.
But now that I tried it it says: "Please select a state or province." (I cant find anything in this list that is not US/Can) and "Please enter a ZIP Code at least 5 characters long" (we just have 4 digits). They just don't want my money..
Instead of virtually enlisting in the US Army I decided to just donate 10x what I tried to load on the card to a charity for Somalia. Thanks Jonathan for igniting my desire to give!
Why would they care as long they get 15 cups of coffee sold? And one person with lots of free coffee tokens is very less likely to use them all than various persons having them.
I don't think they _should_, I just think they _will_. Really, what international megachain wants people doing "social experiments" with their customer-loyalty infrastructure?
231 comments
[ 8.5 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadhttp://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2004084452_w...
In practical terms, paying the toll of the person behind you may not directly propagate to tolls being paid. However, the recipients are going to be just that much happier or less stressed out, and are likely going to pass that mood along to the people they interact with in some way.
It may only make a small, localized part of the world a tiny fraction of a percent better, but it adds up.
I think it was Steven Covey who wrote somewhere about the trim tab on a giant ship's rudder. It's expensive/hard to build a motor that can turn the rudders on a giant container ship directly while it's in motion, but all it takes is a little mini-flap on the edge of the giant rudder.
In what country/state/city? Is that legal? In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters because that robs the city of fines. But maybe it's not a concern for tolls?
> I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all.
At most, it would only reach exactly the car behind you. If that driver decides to pay the toll anyway (or the attendant secretly pockets the additional payment), the extra payment would be surely be swallowed.
Refilling a meter to circumvent the time limit or cover up a violation is illegal in some jurisdictions.
Paying someone else's bill is not illegal.
Thanks for your input, and perhaps for paying my bridge toll ;)
You wrote:
"Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin it for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help."
I see where you're coming from, but I believe that A) nobody (with the possible exception of Starbucks) can ruin this, and B) the solution to the bad egg problem is to be more open, not more controlling.
Stay tuned... j
Only if there's also a continuous stream of people who are drinking without paying. If, out of a sense of community responsibility, people pay in close to what they drink (or a little bit more), then this system works.
Use it when you can't afford coffee, refill it when you can afford a coffee plus a little more...
If you're living paycheck to paycheck and buying Starbucks every morning, that's definitely part of your problem. I understand and fully appreciate paying a bit more for a quality product, but when it comes down to it, being able to start a savings and plan for your future is more important than enjoying a better cup of coffee in the morning. It's directly analagous to buying a car that's out of your price range (say, a Lexus when you're only bringing in $35,000 a year pre-tax) and struggling to pay the note on it every month. You really can live with the cheaper product, and in the long run it may do you a world of good.
Am I wrong? I'd like to see some other people's input on this idea.
jonathanscard
I got $7.91 left on me.
18 Jul
I've lived in downtown San Diego for a while, and I've taken to just getting to know some of the homeless people who hang around the 7-11 by my apartment and buying food for them when they ask me.
That being said, you did a good thing by trying :)
With a taste like that in food, I'm not surprised your latte and (excellent, I'm sure) Starbucks sandwich fell on stony ground.
Good sentiment though. May karma follow you throughout the day.
Cash prizes are less interesting for this kind of thing. (various studies)
I've read the same, but I don't believe it. For example people will say that fame is more important than money, but I would argue fame leads to more work, or more free stuff which in turn leads to money or more money than a set cash incentive. Or the case where people do things for points, but when those points are redeemable for physical items or discounts again this leads right back to some sort of cash savings. I think it always go back to some sort of monetary incentive.
If you get ahold of the victim's phone, the victim has bigger problems (NFC, e-mail, saved passwords, etc.).
Is it possible to restrict the card only to coffee (to prevent huge catering orders)?
P.S. does anyone want to call this guy Lord Starkbucks?
Now I know where Jon Snow ends up.
If the card suddenly gets a $100 recharge I'm sure it will be abused a lot more. Maybe that's part of the experiment, but I'd like to see what people do in general without that knowledge.
EDIT: or maybe even just a "this card has more than <insert cost of minimum item>" so that people know it can be used, but not how many times.
I've been thinking about this quite a bit. One the one hand, last week some jerk saw a $50 balance and spent the whole thing in one shot.
On the other hand, people need to know when there is money on the card if they are thinking about walking down to a sbux to get a coffee.
I might try the "there's more than $10 on the card right now". I've also experimented with delaying the reloaded messages, and doling out the money more directly by asking who wants a coffee.
Folks who respond get the update if they're quick. We'll see what happens, but I believe that there is a sustainable way to handle it.
Cheers! j
Require a photo of the purchase.
It would add a level of social obligation. You could go further and require a tweet explaining the purchase. You could even add a little homily about good manners and not being greedy to the explanatory text.
I think you are doing a very interesting experiment with new financial entities, and I'm curious to see where this leads.
To the other points: how would you go about mandating a photo or any other form of interaction from the purchaser? Jonathan has his card picture posted on the website–Starbucks simply accepts that photo as payment, there's no authorization process in the middle where Jonathan could selectively let some use it while disallowing others.
This could be a web-app or it could be a native one.
Oh and btw my name is jonathan too. Pretty cool
Now, for the reason I actually wrote the comment: This should be expected behavior. It's quite possible that "jerk" actually needs the help more than the person who gets the one coffee. It's equally viable to assume s/he is simply taking advantage of the system. In the bigger picture, I think these dynamics are completely expected. Would you call the guy that gives $50 or $100 a jerk as well? Either way, it's an experiment, and I wouldn't expect it, given a proper sampling, to deviate much from what we see in society as a whole.
Best wishes - and great idea!
Maybe they have to tweet you the advertisement, and then you can retweet, so you get more exposure in their twitter stream as well.
Fair point. My goal is to figure out the dynamics of social giving in this fashion and create a similar sustainable model around items that are less "luxury" than coffee.
For example, I can imaging people paying for other people's groceries or medicine in a similar manner. Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems worth trying.
Best, j
I hope one of your other ideas works! Good luck! But I suspect a big part of the impetus behind the contributions is a feeling of reciprocity, which is a different impulse from charity.
Honestly, why? You can't scold everyone into "real" virtuous behavior, so why not give them a taste of what it feels like and see if they can get hooked?
Do you believe that people putting money on this card would actually donate it towards a more deserving end?
I (think I) understand your goal here, but ultimately I think what you're doing is either ineffective in or outright harmful towards achieving it.
But do I really need to explain why that is undesirable, or why most people in the world don't do this?
I totally agree. The sbux site and card don't support this directly, but I think I have a way to achieve this manually that involves requesting a coffee before you can know how much is on the card. We'll see!
Thanks, j
Well, Jonathan may get the Rewards so it is not completely altruistic.
A real-time map of where transactions have been made ala http://twittervision.com might be interesting if this card goes viral
https://www.starbucks.com/card/rewards
Yes, unfortunately I do get the rewards. I get a free coffee for every 15 purchased. I figured that the free coffees would accrue to the card itself and therefore every 16th person would get a free coffee. As it turns out, sbux mails free coffee coupons to me:
http://yfrog.com/keup3hxj
I'm not sure how to redistribute them fairly, but I was thinking that I could at least pass them out at my local store. However, doing so is expressly forbidden and my name is on the postcards.
Thoughts? j
Also, Maybe a good idea to ensure auto-reload is not setup on the card! I dont know that it is, but if it is you could be out a significant amount of money. Looking at your API calls I dont see where it has been auto-reloaded.
This is a neat idea.
Otherwise, you're "stuck"; be open about it (as you are), and use them or not. I wouldn't hold it against you either way, personally.
The page on Rawr includes a basic usage example as well as links to my implementation on GitHub and Hackage.