The Cost of Free Doughnuts(npr.org) |
The Cost of Free Doughnuts(npr.org) |
The Red Cross receives funding through donations and/or government subsidies. The donuts really are not their core product, if anything they would be more akin to a retail 'loss leader'.
The average web startup only has one core product, at least it gets to the Facebook scale of having thread its way into multiple aspects of your life. These startups are only getting their money through venture investors, who most certainly do not view their checks as 'donations'. So, there is a basic requirement to transition from free to revenue generation in some fashion.
The troops most likely saw the donuts as a small token offering from the Red Cross, and also felt they had done something to earn these free donuts. While there is a lot of feelings of entitlement among some customers of free services, I think the bulk of the users understand the company has to make money somehow.
In many cases the 'freemium' model appears to work well, as long as the paid versions offer obvious value. I wouldn't recommend for most people to not offer some free version of the product, but I also wouldnt warn them against charging for their products via a story about Red Cross donuts.
Understanding and caring are two completely different things.
More importantly, when the fee was removed again, parents continued late pickups at the higher (with-fee) rate. That's the real point of both stories - once the terms of the agreement have been moved from the social to the monetary realm, it's very hard to get people's brains to switch back to the social terms.
Then when you remove the price you are sending another signal, which is "oh it used to cost money but now we offer this for free!
It's worth really thinking through the whole social signal thing first....
with the Red Cross, one option might have been a donation box right next to the donuts with a note saying what they had been asked to do and why.... and soliciting additional donations, to be used to provide donuts to the British soldiers, perhaps! That avoids changing the relationship.....
If the Red Cross had shut down the donut stations and then came back some time later with comfort food in a modified form, the soldiers would see the new stations independent of their anchor to the previously free stations.
Indeed, the fault lies with SecDef for the change. And the change affected a certain aspect of morale. But the suggested change would most certainly have been noticed. If Red Cross was the only place to get this item, then it dried up, then someone else made them available, even at a pittance, the entitlement sentiment exists and colors the experience.
Are these services really free? We may not pay cash to use these services but we certainly are paying something.
But that's not the point. The soldiers perceived the donuts as free, and people perceive Facebook as free. Charging for donuts or access to your wall will change that perception.
(And I'm not sure I'd say that trying to evade cognitive biases is a "trick", really.)
I also think that charitable gestures towards men risking their lives and suffering great hardship to protect entire civilizations are categorically a different thing from a commercial product. I think the troops probably felt this way as well, which is really the crux of the whole issue, isn't it?
There's a massive difference between "here's a little something to say thanks for fighting for our country" and "doughnuts for sale"--and one is hardly a substitute for the other.
Would you provide a few examples, please? Thanks.
Windows Vista -> Windows Mojave [2] (Although this was just to "taste test")
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadview_Security [2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXrKO33Rc2g
Why should that gesture be coming from the Red Cross, an organisation that's supposed to transcend nationalities and help all people regardless of politics?
As for the moral value of providing a gesture of thanks to people who are literally fighting the Nazis, I'll let you work that out for yourself.
Secondly, fuck you for that second statement (and somewhat implying that my morals are twisted). Those kinds of judgement calls are exactly why the Red Cross and MSF are apolitical. "Fuck those guys over there, they're -foo-" is precisely what these organisations area against, a core part of why they were formed.
As for the substance of your remark, I actually agree with the mission of MSF and ICRC. I just also happen to agree with the mission of stopping the Nazis, albeit after the fact. It's odd that you've gone so far out of your way to imply you feel otherwise.
The reason why I said it was that your condescending comment was not only extremely patronising, it was wrong. The story above took place in 1942. The allies didn't even accept that the Final Solution was taking place until 1944. Yes, Jews were being shipped off to concentration camps - so were the Japanese in the US. This was not something particularly immoral to the public of the day.
The simple question is this: If "but they're nazis!" is the all-powerful "I win" moral trump card of the day, why did the US wait two years before joining the war, and even then only doing so because they were attacked?
It's odd that you've gone so far out of your way to imply you feel otherwise. Another condescending, patronising remark, showing that you're more interested in belittling me than understanding what I have to say. Just because I support apolitical care organisations doesn't mean I want genocide to proceed - and I don't believe you really think I am implying that.
I'll just note that the United States gets criticized for not rushing into war against aggressive dictators about as often as it gets criticized for actually doing so. The record of the other Western allies is little better on that account, as they explicitly abandoned Czechoslovakia and implicitly abandoned Poland, Norway, Denmark, and even France.