For
those unfamiliar with the concept, the idea behind crowdsourcing is that while
many entrepreneurial projects are beyond the budget capacity of any individual
whose parents didn’t leave him a billion-dollar trust fund, very few projects
are beyond the collective finances of the entire Internet. If every person on
the planet with Internet access were to contribute a single penny to a given
cause, that would be something on the order of $20 million US – and even if a
tiny subset of all Internet users (a million or so people) did it we’re talking
around $10,000 US. Kickstarter itself is essentially a clearinghouse for people
who are trying to gain this sort of mass public funding to connect with people
who are looking to help fund products or services that they themselves would
like to purchase or use. Unfortunately, the public nature of the site creates
the potential for several kinds of abuse – among the most visible of which is
sometimes referred to as high-profile electronic panhandling…
Consider,
for example, the case of actor Zach Braff and his attempts to use Kickstarter
to fund a sequel to one of his earlier movies. As the guys over at the Onion
A/V Club correctly point out, Braff almost certainly has the industry
connections to find conventional backing for the project, given that the
original film was a commercial success, and could probably afford to fund the
whole thing himself (if the folks over at Celebrity Net Worth.com are correct).
But by using crowdsourced funds, Braff was able to achieve a level of artistic
freedom that would not have been possible using traditional financing, while at
the same time generating up-front interest from tens of thousands of potential
customers (over 46,000 people contributed to the Kickstarter campaign). This
could be seen as going a great amount of potential good for American Cinema, or
at least for Zach Braff fans, but it ignores the darker aspect of these events…
First,
there’s the fact that not all movie projects on Kickstarter are going to be (arguably)
legitimate cinema – you are also going to get requests like the (apparently
failed) Melissa Joan Hart romantic-comedy vanity project. But much more to the
point, most Kickstarter projects are launched by obscure entrepreneurs who do
not have the resources available to a successful movie and television actor.
Every dollar contributed to an actor’s vanity project on the basis of his or
her star power is a dollar that can’t be extended to deserving inventions and
businesses, some of which could actually create new industries, produce dozens
(or thousands) of new jobs, or even (in rare cases) actually make the world a
better place…
So
I have to ask: Do Kickstarter and the other sites like them have any ethical
obligation to the more obscure entrepreneurs who come to them looking for funding,
or to all of the stakeholders who might benefit from the creation of these
products, services and companies? Should they give special priority to projects
that have the potential to change the world for the better, at the expense of
applicants who have other resources available? If so, how do they make those
decisions, and where do they draw the line between entrepreneurial haves and
have-nots? Or should they just allow any lawful enterprise to put forward its
requests for funding and let the public vote with their wallets?
It’s
worth thinking about…
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