from Hacker News

Cards Against Humanity Redistributes Your Wealth

by rjsamson on 12/9/17, 11:23 PM with 184 comments

• by FLGMwt on 12/10/17, 1:11 AM

  Oh hey, on top of the prevalent skepticism and detractions in the current discussion, I'll just throw out that, on its own, this is objectively a Good Thing.

  I won't dismiss the fact that this is good PR for CAH, but it is still morally-motivated positive impact for some fixed number of people. A company took some profit they had and exceptionally distributed to some of their less fortunate customers.

  Don't immediately react and reply that this is gameable. Don't immediately react and reply that this isn't scalable.

  Pause for a second and think about why this is necessarily coming from a game company that's small and makes a crude product. Think about why something like this shouldn't be coming from an entity with much more power to effect positive social or economical change.

  And if you're part of one of those powers, can you do something?

• by n0her0 on 12/10/17, 1:09 AM

  They took the money and put it where it seemed like it would have the biggest impact. The people who paid $15 should all be very happy to have been a part of this. For many, especially those with little income and high economic insecurity, holidays are very tough and actually result in working few days having less money at a time of greater need.

  To those seeking to criticize, it was not meant to be a perfect example of anything. It is also very relevant that this was done by a company who could have kept that money and sent a Christmas card with something snarky, and it would not have hurt their bottom line.

  One of the coolest things I've read in a long time.

• by ridgewell on 12/10/17, 12:54 AM

  >We excluded all Canadians. They already have universal healthcare. They’ll be fine.

  Yikes. I certainly got a laugh out of that, then an overly reflective period of what I'm grateful for, especially the benefits afforded from being north of the border.

• by fabianhjr on 12/10/17, 4:03 AM

  For anyone that liked this action, you can continue it trough GiveDirectly (https://givedirectly.org/). It gives Direct Cash Transfers (DCTs) to those most in need and produces evidence of the impact of their models and actions.

  The short-term impact of unconditional cash transfers to the poor< https://www.princeton.edu/~joha/publications/Haushofer_Shapi... >

  > We find that treatment households increased both consumption and savings (in the form of durable good purchases and investment in their self-employment activities). In particular, we observe increases in food expenditures and food security, but not spending on temptation goods. Households invest in livestock and durable assets (notably metal roofs), and we show that these investments lead to increases in revenue from agricultural and business activities, although we find no significant effect on profits at this short time horizon. We also observe no evidence of conflict resulting from the transfers; on the contrary, we report large increases in psychological wellbeing, and an increase in female empowerment with a large spillover effect on non-recipient households in treatment villages. Thus, these findings suggest that simple cash transfers may not have the perverse effects that some policymakers feel they would have, which has led to a clear policy preference for in-kind or skills transfers [...] and conditional transfers.

  EDIT: Added link to GD.

• by rocqua on 12/10/17, 1:16 AM

  This is a great thing. Truly, hats of too cards against humanity.

  I noticed something worrying about myself when reading these stories. A small voice in the back of my head judged a lot of these people. Those who say they will use it for gifts, travel or other things I apparently deem frivolous. It is not okay of me to think these things. These people deserve happiness, and these people can make their own choices. This disdain is something I really wanna work on. :(

• by owenversteeg on 12/10/17, 1:33 AM

  Anyone else want to discuss the wealth metric they created? That's fascinating to me, with just a handful of datapoints they were able to estimate people's income fairly effectively IMO.

  The biggest 3 points were census information from addresses (median income/percentage below poverty line), race/gender/education plus BLS statistics, and occupation (combined with median income for that job from BLS.)

• by djsumdog on 12/10/17, 1:24 AM

  I think back to last year's Holliday Hole. One of the FAQs was, "Why don't you give the money to charity?" A: "Why don't you give the money to charity. It's your money."

  I'm glad this year they're not literally throwing money into a hole...err..dig a hole.

• by phantom_oracle on 12/10/17, 2:06 AM

  This would probably fall into the off-topic area considering the content of the site, but I am quite impressed about the fact that they bought this long-ass domain and went along with it.

  Does this give insight into the fact that under certain circumstances, we are post-dotcom (as a critical tool for branding)?

  Their regular domain is quite long too: https://www.cardsagainsthumanity.com/

  (and is definitely not as friendly to the eyes as something like: cah.[trendy-extension])

• by fmavituna on 12/10/17, 10:48 AM

  Whenever I hear about wealth inequality, I think of Zakat ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/practices/zaka... ).

  It's one of the 5 pillars of Islam. One has to give 2.5% of their wealth to poor. It's compulsory unlike Sadaqah - Charity ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadaqah ).

  I guess if everyone followed just this 2.5% rule, there wouldn't be any poor left in the world (I didn't do the math though).

  P.S. When I say poor, I'm not referring to people who cannot afford the new iPhone.

• by FLUX-YOU on 12/10/17, 12:53 AM

  Did they actually buy the land they said they were going to buy to keep an eminent domain lawsuit open so that The Wall can't be built?

• by CloudYeller on 12/10/17, 4:22 AM

  Inspiring to see why $1000 makes so much of a difference for many recipients: the most common theme was spending time with family.

  Sometimes work just seems like random people fighting tooth and nail to earn millions. It would be interesting to see everyone's reasons for acting that way. I bet it usually boils down to "it's for my family". But the real truth there is, having a happy family does not require millions.

• by FLGMwt on 12/10/17, 2:05 AM

  pokes head out of curtain

  What if $15 means something different to people with fungible assets* vs. those where money is tight.

  *: HN population

• by akkat on 12/10/17, 7:18 AM

  > We used recipients’ race, gender, and education levels to estimate incomes using Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2015.

  I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that all pictures of the $1000 winners have women.

• by bluthru on 12/10/17, 2:08 AM

  Much better than digging a hole in the ground or buying up property along the border.

• by em3rgent0rdr on 12/10/17, 7:50 AM

  CAH suggests they're making the case that the government should fund welfare. But it appears to me that they are unintentionally making the case that the private sector can fund welfare.

• by bobcostas55 on 12/10/17, 1:29 AM

  Literally every single poor person pictured is obese. That baby is almost certainly going to be overweight in a few years.

  I'm amazed this isn't a bigger issue politically. Nutrition is a huge driver of health inequality. In 50 years the obesity rate has quadrupled. A return to the eating habits of the 1960s is perhaps the greatest possible welfare achievement right now (in the US), with impact far larger than universal healthcare. And it doesn't need to cost anything.

• by mberning on 12/10/17, 12:52 AM

  Wait... all these people paid $15 to begin with? Are you really that poor if you can flip out $15 for any little thing that comes along.

• by alexasmyths on 12/10/17, 2:36 AM

  Wealth concentration is a problem but poor countries are not poor because some rich Westerners 'have a lot of power'.

  Nice sentiment though, and that counts for something.

• by eutectic on 12/10/17, 12:42 AM

  Why only consider within-country inequality (and, yes, I realize that the answer is 'because it's partly a publicity stunt, and humans are biased and parochial')?

  The average American is incomparable wealthy compared to the average African, and you can on average save a life for only a few $thousand to one of Givewell's top recommended charities.

• by MilnerRoute on 12/10/17, 2:21 AM

  How do we know this really is "Cards Against Humanity," and not just some prankster's domain?

• by partiallypro on 12/10/17, 2:02 AM

  "The US government actually knows how much money you have and has trillions of dollars to redistribute. Why don’t you get mad at the US government?"

  A lot of hardworking people don't want handouts from the government. Though some do, but I believe they are a minority. I generally hate the mindset of wanting money from the government. I want off of the government if I can help it.

  The fact is that most Americans pay virtually no federal income tax, and get money back during their returns. When I was starting out and made the median income level for the state I was living in at the time, I still paid no tax (outside of SALT) and got a return larger than what I paid in. People don't realize the government already heavily subsidizes the poor and as well as people well above the poverty line.