This is a interesting idea, but your example oversells it substantially. Future iterations need to not do this, or you’ll sound like a huckster and not get support.
If all ten people on the street have to contribute, everyone knows for sure that they won’t get what they want if they don’t contribute. No payback is necessary; free riding is impossible. That’s the easy case. When you just need some amount of money rather than every single individual to contribute, it’s quite possible to free ride.
But why can’t I just let other people pay and free-ride?
You haven’t been paying attention. Unless I’ve priced this contract wrong, if you don’t pay it doesn’t happen.
This is egregiously wrong. You can’t possibly know that this contract will fail if each individual reader of this sentence doesn’t contribute. This is the distinction from the example you’ve used.
So I agree with the other comments that this does not fix the freerider problem. At all. Which is the big problem, not the frictional costs of pledging.
I think you’ve got to fix that terrible logic in future versions, or you’ll sound dishonest.
I still pledged fifty bucks, because improving crowdsourcing like Kickstarter even marginally is a worthy goal! And the frictional cost is still a problem, so overcoming it will help.
This is a interesting idea, but your example oversells it substantially. Future iterations need to not do this, or you’ll sound like a huckster and not get support.
If all ten people on the street have to contribute, everyone knows for sure that they won’t get what they want if they don’t contribute. No payback is necessary; free riding is impossible. That’s the easy case. When you just need some amount of money rather than every single individual to contribute, it’s quite possible to free ride.
This is egregiously wrong. You can’t possibly know that this contract will fail if each individual reader of this sentence doesn’t contribute. This is the distinction from the example you’ve used.
So I agree with the other comments that this does not fix the freerider problem. At all. Which is the big problem, not the frictional costs of pledging.
I think you’ve got to fix that terrible logic in future versions, or you’ll sound dishonest.
I still pledged fifty bucks, because improving crowdsourcing like Kickstarter even marginally is a worthy goal! And the frictional cost is still a problem, so overcoming it will help.