I’m a huge fan of voluntary charity, which is why I like the idea behind Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a service where people can post ideas in need of funding and people can voluntarily donate money to the ideas they like. In essence Kickstarter has established site based on a form of mutual aid and they’re kicking some major ass:
Kickstarter is off to a running start this year. As Alexis Madrigal reported, the crowdfunding platform saw its first two million-dollar projects in one day, within four hours of each other, and a third reached that benchmark this past Monday. Earlier this month, people on the site pledged more than $1.6 million in a 24-hour period, more than doubling the previous record, which had been set the day before. Now, Carl Franzen of Talking Points Memo is putting that cash flow in perspective. He reports that the company is expecting to bring in $150 million in funding total this year — more than the $146 million provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency charged with supporting the arts (many Kickstarter initiatives are art projects of one kind or another).
Instead of using government coercion to take money from people and redistribute it to others Kickstarter simply asks members to donate money to project they want to see happen. Kickstarter’s success demonstrates that people are more than willing to give to causes they support, a fact that many collectivists deny.