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Comment by swombat | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I actually feel good about paying those $5 knowing that most of it won't end up in Louis's pocket, actually.

If I wanted to donate to charities, I'd do it myself. I don't want to, I believe there are better ways to use money - so I feel that money is kind of wasted.

More importantly, I felt good about paying $5 because I felt I was giving $5 to Louis CK to support a great effort and an awesome artist. The fact that he's keeping only 22% of it makes me feel like 78% of it was rejected. If so, I might as well have kept my $5.

Honestly, right now what I'm thinking is that I'll probably get the next version off BitTorrent. I'm not happy paying for a download with 80% of overhead, especially if that overhead is voluntary. Most of the $5 should end up in Louis' pocket, and if it doesn't, I don't feel like throwing it down the drain, I have better uses for my money.

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You gave the money to Louis, he spent it however he felt like, which includes giving to charity. Where's the problem?

You give your son $100 as a birthday present. He spends $20 on himself and throws the rest in the bin. That's his choice, but next time, will you give him money? I wouldn't.

Except that's a terribly inaccurate analogy. This isn't a $5 gift, it's a transaction for a product. He's not throwing away the rest, he's paying bills and donating to charities.

How you came up with "throwing $80 in the bin" is beyond me.

Just wanted to add to this (not that it's needed to make the point): Louis C.K. isn't your child.

Charity apparently equals to throwing money in the bin, according to his pov.

He's not throwing away the rest, he's paying bills and donating to charities.

Indeed, one can think of it just more purchase, only he's buying a better[0] world.

[0] Modulo your opinion of those charities.

There was a study where some students where given varying amounts of money. Half of the students were instructed to spend the money on themselves. The other half was instructed to buy something for a friend or give it to charity. Those who spent it on themselves had the least improvement in happiness - no matter what the amount was. Think about it... maybe Louise CK actually made the best investment he could for his own happiness.

Do judge all people with what they do with the money they earn, or just famous people?

Do you not shop at a store because you've seen the cashier going into a strip club?

Isn't it exhausting to be that judgmental?

Imagine that Louis takes the $280k and buys a yacht. You may not agree with Louis that a yacht is a particularly worthwhile use of $280k, but the effects of the purchase are localized: Louis gets a yacht, the yacht company gets $280k.

Conversely, charities are designed to have broad effects on the world. Often these effects are undeniably good, but not always! Some charities give out bibles, some campaign for the right to abortion, some campaign against abortion, some give food to the poor without regard to local economies, and some campaign for free software. I challenge you to find any one person who agrees with all of these things :)

Now, I don't believe that the charities that Louis has chosen are doing bad work!

But if you are going to be donating 28% of someone's purchase to charity, it would be courteous to explain, ahead of time, exactly which charities are going to benefit -- because not everybody is going to agree.

This is a disturbing trend of on-line entitlement that really needs to be nipped in the bud.

Here's the thing: you bought the video from Louis CK. What he does with the money is his business. He's not "donating 28% of your purchase to charity", he's spending _his_ money.

It stopped being _your money_ when you bought something from him.

If he decided to spend 100% of his money on hookers and blow, what business is it of yours? It's his money, not yours. It doesn't become yours again just because he decides to tell you how he spent it.

It seems like he feels he paid his $5 as "charity" to support this experiment, and now feels cheated because he realize that the experiment would've been successful at a lower price point, and so part of his money was spent on something other than his purpose.

So the issue here is that he made his buying decision seemingly not because he thought $5 was a fair price for the product.

Which doesn't really make it any less ridiculous...

If you want to donate five dollars to charity, by all means do it yourself. If you want to buy a stand-up film for $5, then do that. He made no promises that he would use the money for charity, or for anything in particular up front.

How does the fact that he's giving some of the money to charity affect your purchase in any way? Do you also feel bad that he's using some of it to pay his employees and care for his children? Would you be happier if he bought a hovercraft or something?

The value of the thing you bought doesn't change no matter what he uses the money for.

As long as he's not like, using it to fund terrorism or something. Then I could see being upset that you supported him.

I (who am not the OP) would feel better if he gave the money to himself, then he used the money for charity.

In the blog post, Louis states that money is "the money" not "his money," and that "the money" is going towards charity.

What he should have said was "I am receiving 500k of "the money" to which I am giving 280k of it to charity"

It's a semantic argument, but for some reason it means something to me.

Louis CK: 'I never viewed money as being "my money" I always saw it as "The money" It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.'

I don't think his point is that this money exists in some sort of limbo where it's not his, because however he views it, it's still his money. I think he's making a general statement about how he views money: as a resource to be used, not a collectible to be amassed.

> The value of the thing you bought doesn't change no matter what he uses the money for.

While this is true, I don't think it is the whole story. Money is also a signal, and understanding how you signal is part of being an aware consumer/investor. You might not like Nike's labor practices (how it uses the money it makes when you buy a pair of sneakers) and therefore not buy Nikes, although you find genuine value in their product.

I am absolutely floored by the amount of lunacy in this post. Congratulations, swombat, you blew my mind. It feels like I have rewritten this comment a thousand times because I just don't know how to respond.

"Honestly, right now what I'm thinking is that I'll probably get the next version off BitTorrent. I'm not happy paying for a download with 80% of overhead, especially if that overhead is voluntary. Most of the $5 should end up in Louis' pocket, and if it doesn't, I don't feel like throwing it down the drain, I have better uses for my money."

Or you could just not pay for it _and_ not torrent it. That would be the principled thing to do, if you really (inexplicably) object to someone donating their own hard-earned money to charity.

But the money did end up in his pocket. He then spent a big chunk of it on something he wanted to spend money on, which was five specific charities.

That excludes the part he spent on expenses and staff, which went precisely to "support a great effort". It's not like he does this stuff alone.

He gives 25% as a bonus to people who made the whole thing happen. People who, as often as not, don't get any bonuses at all (at least in this magnitude). This will be a huge thing for them. That alone was worth the $5.

>If I wanted to donate to charities, I'd do it myself.

So then your employer shouldn't give you a paycheck, if you're just going to turn around and give it to someone else?

Just in case you thought there was anything that couldn't be trolled, here is the guy who managed to come out against giving earnings to charity. Why couldn't Louis just spend the million on hookers and blow like a normal entertainer?

Donating to charity and giving extra money to his employees will garner a ton of positive publicity which will result in Louis being more of a household name and doing more sales. Just like the initial publicity about the "experiment" did.

It's already happening:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/hap...

Edit: I would have to guess that the idea of spreading the cheer by the savvy CK has been carefully thought out.

He didn't know how many people would pay $5, I imagine it was just an arbitrary number he felt was reasonable. Only 25% went to charity, so really it was a pretty good guess. Maybe next time he'll charge $3.75.

That's a great idea! I think your employer should do the same for you.

Actually, I felt very similar to you. That 280k he gave to charity should go towards funding his next venture, or funding another comic's venture.

<blatantSarcasm>Yeah let's just forget about all the poor suffering people! Survival of the fittest, right?!</blatantSarcasm>

But in all seriousness, I'm curious as to how/why you and the grandparent think that funding his or another comic's next venture would be more beneficial to the world as whole than donating it to charity. To have an opportunity to improve the lives of thousands, possibly millions, but ignore it and focus on yourself is extremely selfish; and I hope there aren't many people out there who would do such a thing.

You might argue that his investments in future ventures might return more money to donate than he originally would have, but that would be assuming that Louis CK doesn't already have the finances for that; and I assure you, he either does or he can obtain it with minimal effort.

I don't think he's hurting for cash, particularly. That's one of those industries where the unknowns make almost nothing, but once you become a household name you make quite a lot of money.

And beyond that he could always borrow money for a venture that's likely to be profitable, or he could just go with Comedy Central the next time around.

The 250k going to pay for the special is more accurately "replenishing" his company, as Louis CK stated during his interview with Jimmy Fallon. That money will certainly be used for his next project. Plus, the remainder that he's taking for himself will allow him to devote more personal (and probably unpaid) time to whatever the next project is.

Since he's the one doing it, I'm confident his judgement as to what amounts are necessary is sound.

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