He wasn't the only one skimming money from the card he just got the most attention for it by publicizing what he did.

You might even draw the parallel to a white hat who publicizes a vulnerability rather than quietly exploiting it for profit.

edit: He did skim quite a lot to prove the concept. Maybe he was seriously considering that iPad.

I could draw the parallel to a white hat who breaks into my house to steal some of my stuff, gives it to the Goodwill, and then blogs about it in order to publicize the vulnerability that I leave my front door unlocked.

"Hey man, you left your front door unlocked. Anyone could have done that."

I know. I leave my front door unlocked with the expectation that, in general, people won't. You're one of the bad guys.

"Hey, that's unfair. It's not like I'm profiting from it. I gave it to the Goodwill."

Next time you're feeling charitable, donate some of your own stuff. That's what I do. It's all the good feelings, without any of the stealing.

I agree. If Sam Odio's post had a graph or table with the suspicious changes highlighted, and a conservative total of them exceeding the amount he took, I think fewer people would have given him grief over it.

>Are you likewise surprised by the fact that people don't like the guy who comes up to the bowl labeled "Free Candy" and takes all of the candy //

Well it's like a guy coming up to a bowl of free candy in a place where everyone already has their pockets stuffed with candy, then going to some other place where people haven't got any candy and giving the candy to them.

Oh and the kicker, the guy who took all the free candy made sure, it seems, that the candy bowl was stocked up already and didn't take any more candy than was put in by his friend.

... and then there was uproar, because dammit, giving that free candy to people without any candy was not part of the intention of the sign "free candy", the people fervently agreed that free candy should only be for those who have lots of candy already.

Then people posted abusive messages because they hated being pointed out to that giving free candy to people with lots of candy was probably not really as generous as all that ... or something.

> Well it's like a guy coming up to a bowl of free candy in a place where everyone already has their pockets stuffed with candy, then going to some other place where people haven't got any candy and giving the candy to them.

The merits of that action aside, we don't actually know that's what he's going to do with the money from eBay. We do know that he's going out of his way to convert it to cash, and we also know that he's gone out of his way to make himself seem less trustworthy. Given that cash is fungible and he wants to promote the idea of giving to charity, you'd think he would have given what he expected to make off the card to charity and pointed that out up front, if giving the money to charity were really his intention.

He's converting it because he doesn't think starving children in Africa have much use for a Starbucks gift card.

My point is that if he intends to give the money to starving children in Africa (or, really, to people who say that some percentage will end up being given to starving children...), the fact that money is money means that there's no reason not to do that at once.

I'm not one of those willing to call what Odio did theft; it's merely rude and underhanded. But I do wonder if people who do business with him in the future will not pause to remember that he's proud of being someone who will exploit the exact letter of the rules to his own advantage (probably mere self-satisfaction in this case, but one does wonder why he didn't do the donation first...), even when the spirit of the thing was otherwise. It seems possible that he has given up considerable future income in return for the personal satisfaction he derived from stepping on someone else's fun.

From a business persepctive, Sam Odio's action was fantastic. He made one of the best answers ever seen for the YC application question "when have you hacked a system?"

He walked up to a pile of money just sitting their being used for a suboptimal purpose, and he took it and put it to good use.

I know I'll never buy anything from a business run by Sam Odio, unless he somehow were to redact all this douchery. I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. There are too many decent people out there to waste time and money with someone like this.

I hope this doesn't come off as callous, but giving the money to charity is irrelevant. That's the whole point of the analogy: candy isn't expensive. We could all have as much as we want. If you want to give candy to underprivileged children, you can go out and buy a big bag yourself for five bucks.

What Sam did (we presume) in giving $500 to charity is noble. It would be much nobler if he had used his own money. What you and others are doing by rationalizing it is essentially saying that none of us has a right to any frivolity so long as there are people starving in the world, and taking things is okay as long as you give them to someone who needs them more. I got pickpocketed on the subway— but you know what, I was just gonna spend that $70 on a new pair of sneakers anyway, and I bet the thief needs new shoes much more than I do.

Which, really, has some validity to it. But that's a way, way larger social issue than the one at hand. If we grant, as we must, that it is okay for an American to drink coffee, what Sam did is a dick move.

  > Sam literally did the opposite of contribute to the experiment. There is nothing he could have done which would be more disruptive.
  >
  > The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive.

I took from this that a system like this cannot survive, because there will always be actors trying to game it.

I think this actually parallels how many entitlement programs work: they are set up for truly altruistic reasons, but bad actors enter the program and make it difficult for the program to remain sustainable. A subset of people will always manipulate a system where they can get something for nothing.

The problem is that usually that same subset of people are just doing it to prove that it can be done and therefor the programs "aren't sustainable".

They form a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

If someone had not done it loudly and publicly, someone would have done it quietly and probably larger.

I mean, come on, what's the alternative? "There exist no exploitative jerks in the world"? We already know that's not true, just to cite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociopath as one (very large) example. Maybe Jonathon has learned some stuff from his experiment, it went exactly as I expected.

It works for a while, because at first people make grand gestures to show how cool they are to each other, and they outnumber the abusers, but as the fame wears off, so too does the benefits of making the grand gesture, whereas the benefits of sponging never go away. It doesn't mean life is hopeless nor does it mean the bad will always outweigh the good in the world, it just means you need some more structure to things before you can expect net positive outcomes, and that structure will take some experience, and reflections and refinements based on that experience, to best manifest.

> The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive.

Although this is a whole other discussion, the experiment had a few more implications than that, and Odio pointed them out.

>I'm baffled by your surprise at the reaction. Are you likewise surprised by the fact that people don't like the guy who comes up to the bowl labeled "Free Candy" and takes all of the candy, leaving none for anyone else? "But I'm just demonstrating that any system based on goodwill is open to abuse!" Well, yeah. We know. People hate that.

I should say I'm more surprised at the magnitude and nature of the outrage. There's lots of thoughtful commentary, but at the same time, I've read lots of blind hatred towards Sam. The community around Jonathan's Card appear to be outraged and are touting their moral superiority over Odio. He may have been a dick, but to me, it appears like so many were acting as if Jonathan's Card was their only act of goodwill - and many were acting like this was going to benefit those in need (debatable). Sam said it was about 'yuppies buying other yuppies coffee.' He was pointing out an issue that other people who were taking advantage of the cards were not doing. Unfortunately he chose to game the system.

The Jonathan's Card experiment is not over, and what people do next is the critical result of the experiment.

Don't you care? Think of the children!