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Comment by quinndupont | Hacker News Reader

It's not particularly well written, and in the end he gives the money back to the bank. Hardly a "noble" result (he could have given it to a charity). Now he's got the audacity to shamelessly plug his crap and tip jar. Lame.

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Perhaps, but just because he gave the money back to the "evil bank" instead of a charity doesn't mean it wasn't noble. He stayed within the limits of the law, and now instead of looking like a sneaky anti-system Robin Hood, he's fought a larger cause of awareness. Rather than justice mimmic the cruel, but legal, injustices performed by the banks by spending their wad of cash, he turned it around and gave it back while keeping some form of integrity.

While people seem to think that placing PayPal links in the article was begging, I don't see people complaining about 37 Signals placing order forms on the web on the Basecamp demo page. So, let me understand... Because he gave the story away for free, asking for a tip makes him lame, but companies who flat out charge for a product are not?

Perhaps we find the writing valueless, ergo, the tip jar is obnoxious.

What's less noble, keeping the bank's money, or asking for some of ours?

People have a right to be compensated for their effort. If you don't like it, no one forced you to tip him, and you got all that valueless writing for free. Had he charged up front, you either 1) wouldn't have paid, or 2) would have been disappointed with what you bought. Instead, he gave it away, and if you liked it he suggested a tip. No different than what I see on endless blogs on the net. If he hadn't "begged" for a tip, chances are he wouldn't have gotten any.

What gets me puzzled here though, is it seems that it's OK for a company to charge for something (that may even be valueless to many, many people) and it's expected, but if an individual person suggests tipping on their "product" everyone gets their panties in a bunch. He's viewed as weak for returning the money, and annoying for asking for a tip. Oh well, being reasonable isn't always popular.

If you don't want to tip, don't. But it doesn't make what he did any less noble.

He'll never make as much off of us as he would have off of keeping the money. I guess I just don't understand his thought processes. It's not like the bank cares that he gave the money back, maybe the manager would have thought about it for a day or so, but they would've written it off or collected it from the spam company. He created a losing situation for himself.

I guess my question is, why would he rather have our money than the bank's? Maybe I just have a different set of morals/ethics.

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