It was stated that this was a social experiment. Given the fact that everyone knew what would happen, I hardly think this constitutes abuse. Diverting the money to a more worthy (in his view) cause, as some people were using it to buy food for the homeless, should have been an expected outcome.
As a social experiment, if I leave my bike on my front lawn over night for weeks, eventually it will be stolen. Everybody expects this to happen eventually. Does this excuse the thief?
Nope, but if you say "here is my bike, anyone can use it for whatever they want. Really, whatever. Go nuts." and then having someone say "I know, I'll send this bike to kids in Africa who don't have a bike!" doesn't count as theft.
We’re speaking to different arguments. Your point appears to be that Jonathan setting up the experiment and the people paying into the experiment did so with the understanding that other people could do whatever they wanted with the money, and the OP has done whatever he wanted with the money.
My point was simply that given any situation, the fact that we expect something to happen doesn’t automatically excuse any of the participants of responsibility for their choice. I am not judging the OP, merely pointing out that “everyone’s expectation of outcome” is not a valid defence if he has done something wrong. If you believe he hasn’t done anything wrong for other reasons, that’s fine, carry on.
As you say, this doesn't excuse any of the participants. I find it disappointing, however, that this experiment failed to account for a very probable outcome.
Please don't get me wrong. I love the spirit in which this experiment was conceived. At the same time, it's a shame that such an obvious miscalculation scuttled the whole thing so soon. It isn't easy to keep a good thing going.
the phenomena of golden calf has been known for millennia.
Condense enough value into one spot/artefact, and you'll get some people attracted to and mesmerized by it, the people who can't control themselves around it, coming close and touching it, not necessarily to privatize, just to feel and be around it and be associated/connected with it exactly like it happened with Odio. It is strange though that the triggering threshold for such behavior happened to be that low (ie. for anybody working in hi-tech and living in Bay Area) - iPad/$600 - that is surprising result of the experiment.
>Diverting the money to a more worthy (in his view) cause
there is big difference between diverting your own money from buying coffee/movies/etc to a supposedly more worthy cause (ie. act of charity) and diverting somebody else's money (such an act has different names and none of which is charity). How much of his own money he diverted to such a worthy cause?
