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Comment by pangram | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I go through a toll bridge, I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me. I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all. For the Starbucks card, I would love to live in a society where this could work. Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin (i.e., drain the account) for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help (i.e., go to a web site, auth through hacker news, and then you get the image -- then it is tied to your HN identity).

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My wife works at a Starbucks with a drive-thru and says that the chain reaction frequently persists until the line is emptied; the longest such chain was around twenty cars.

> I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me

In what country/state/city? Is that legal? In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters because that robs the city of fines. But maybe it's not a concern for tolls?

> I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all.

At most, it would only reach exactly the car behind you. If that driver decides to pay the toll anyway (or the attendant secretly pockets the additional payment), the extra payment would be surely be swallowed.

    In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters

Is that true? A quick search brings up http://theexpiredmeter.com/2009/04/parking-ticket-geek-arres... , which suggests that, at the very least, it's legal in Chicago.

Whoa. That's odd. I think it should be illegal for the government to rely / depend on illegal behavior to make money. Otherwise, it seems like a conflict of interest in that there is no incentive to tackle the root cause of crime anymore.

I knew someone who got a parking ticket because he filled his meter. All the cars next to him that didn't bother paying in the first place got nothing. We guessed that the expiring electronic meter signaled the nearest enforcement patrol, and they didn't bother to check neighboring meters that didn't send the "expired" signal.

Don't be silly.

Refilling a meter to circumvent the time limit or cover up a violation is illegal in some jurisdictions.

Paying someone else's bill is not illegal.

Some company in the Gold Coast (originally it was the city council, but they stopped, so someone else took up the slack) hires gold-bikini clad girls (called "Meter Maids") to put money into parking meters that are just about to expire. And leave an ad on your windshield. But then, it's a tourist city.

I've always seen karma as more of a net effect than a mystical thing.

In practical terms, paying the toll of the person behind you may not directly propagate to tolls being paid. However, the recipients are going to be just that much happier or less stressed out, and are likely going to pass that mood along to the people they interact with in some way.

It may only make a small, localized part of the world a tiny fraction of a percent better, but it adds up.

I think it was Steven Covey who wrote somewhere about the trim tab on a giant ship's rudder. It's expensive/hard to build a motor that can turn the rudders on a giant container ship directly while it's in motion, but all it takes is a little mini-flap on the edge of the giant rudder.

Jonathan here:

Thanks for your input, and perhaps for paying my bridge toll ;)

You wrote:

"Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin it for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help."

I see where you're coming from, but I believe that A) nobody (with the possible exception of Starbucks) can ruin this, and B) the solution to the bad egg problem is to be more open, not more controlling.

Stay tuned... j

For a more practical membership-share or coffee-club type of set up restrictions make sense...but in this case I think the anonymity of it all is the interesting part — seeing the behavior patterns emerge naturally and anonymously will be very telling.

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