Almost all petitions are pointless, but this one created by Avaaz.org in the wake of the Mumbai tragedy really irritates me.

By signing this petition, members declare that the “terrorist attacks in Mumbai have not divided us, will not divide us, and that we stand together, as one people, against all violent extremists who shamefully target the innocent.”

This is like creating a petition for people to declare they have all five of their fingers. It’s a banal, superfluous statement to be made by the collective. I don’t mean to sound heartless in the midst of a tragedy, and I would let this pass without comment, but I actually think this petition is doing harm. Everyone who signs this petition goes away feeling like they did a little something, when in fact, they’ve done nothing. This petition takes the signatories earnest ambition to help and channels it into a black hole.

I’m sure the people at Avaaz mean well, but this feels like ambulance chasing. The only thing this petition will accomplish is increasing Avaaz’s membership. There’s nothing wrong with organizing people in response to a disaster, but organize with purpose. To do otherwise makes online organizing smell bad as a whole.

As social entrepreneurs, it is our mission to build things that do good, but more than that, it is our responsibility to renounce tools that give people a false sense of accomplishment, depleting them of the precious discomfort that drives them to take action. Petitions are such tools. The Web offers us so much more – let’s starting using it.

-Filed in Tactics, Tools

Joe the Plumber may have been the rage three weeks ago, but there’s a new folk hero in town: Steve the Mailman. When faced with an expanding route and debilitating health problems, mailman Steve Padgett needed to think creatively in order to promptly deliver the mail that mattered to people. So instead of delivering junk mail, he saved everyone some time and hassle by burning it or burying it in his backyard.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be one of those things that is both awesome and illegal; last week, Steve got stuck with 500 hours of community service and a $3,000 fine.

When we heard, we thought people might like a way to show support for Steve by helping him with that $3,000, so we started a campaign to spread the wealth and recoup Steve’s loss. Donations started trickling in, and then awesome email marketing provider MailChimp (we use them for Groupon) stepped in with a donation to tip the campaign.

Now that Steve the Mailman is back in the black, all that remains to be seen is whether he will leverage his national celebrity as shrewdly as his plumbing counterpart. A Steve the Mailman book deal? A run for congress? A website where you can pay to read musings on his blog?

-Filed in Case Studies

I was digging through old files today and found some early iterations of The Point’s logo.

It was only after weeks of failed logo concepts that Joe hit on the idea: Sysiphus finally pushing his boulder over the hill. We think it’s the perfect image for The Point, showing that bringing something to its tipping point can be all it takes, and momentum makes the rest inevitable. It also represents victory over a timeless human struggle – the problems inherent in organizing collective action that The Point helps solves (we never claimed to be anything but audacious…).

Finally, although The Point is about leveraging the influence of groups to solve problems, the group is merely a tool. By showing one person finally shedding his or her boulder, we’re putting the focus on solving your problems, and thinking of the group as a means to an end. We’re trying to embrace self-interest, not work against it.

-Filed in Uncategorized

Check out Spot.Us, a new website for community-funded journalism. On Spot.Us, reporters propose stories, and the community pitches in to fund them. Each story needs to reach a certain funding goal (one might even call it a tipping point) before the reporter actually starts writing the story. Spot.Us is a great way of empowering communities to promote journalism that reflects the public interest.

We’ve been following Spot.Us for quite some time at The Point – since the basic fundraising model is similar, David used The Point to fund several successful stories while Spot.Us was in its early stages of development.

For now, Spot.Us is limited to the San Francisco area – but you can always start a campaign on The Point to fund a story elsewhere.

Spot.Us is extremely well-executed, and the idea has tons of potential. So if you live in the San Francisco area, start using Spot.Us.

-Filed in Tools

The President-elect:

When he was preparing for [the debates] during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

-Filed in Uncategorized

I almost didn’t vote today. As the founder of a website that helps people focus on doing what matters, casting a vote in Illinois (where the election won’t be close and my vote won’t matter) is arguably hypocritical. Had I spent an hour this morning working on The Point instead of voting, it would have done infinitely more good (some vs. none = infinite).

But when I started compiling my argument against voting for the purpose of this post, I realized:

• My argument applies to me and exactly no one else.
• I still think everyone else should vote – indeed, I need them to so I can shirk.
• There is nothing I actually want to change about the way voting is marketed as a civic duty – even though it’s effectively the most meaningless way for an individual to participate in public life and no one deserves a sense of satisfaction for doing it, it still must be done.
• I don’t actually have anything worth saying about not voting.

So that was that – post abandoned, I would abstain from voting in silence.

But after reading an article by Freakonomics author Steven Levitt about the irrationality of voting, I was convinced, ironically, that I should vote.

Levitt explains that many economists consider voting pointless to the point of being a social stigma.

Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the voting booth? Because voting exacts a cost – in time, effort, lost productivity – with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague sense of having done your “civic duty.” As the economist Patricia Funk wrote in a recent paper, “A rational individual should abstain from voting.”

But rational economics is based on the assumption that all parties act rationally. If Funk is using rationality to declare that I shouldn’t vote, then it follows no one else votes either. If no one votes, however, my vote will make a difference, so I should vote. But since everyone is rational, they just all came to that conclusion, so once again everyone is voting… and I shouldn’t vote. But everyone else realized that too… and on and on.

Voting is a particularly interesting collective action puzzle – because it’s designed to be anonymous and uncoordinated, everyone has the exact same cost/benefit (setting aside issues of difficulty getting to the polls, self-satisfaction, etc.). In other words, the rational answer to the question of whether to vote should be the same for everyone in the country.

I think the problem with Funk’s statement stems from a poor definition of what constitutes rational decision making (I’m way out of my league here, but this is a blog so you knew that already). Let me offer two ways of defining a “rational” decision:

• Decisions that produce the greatest personal payoff are in my best interest (Funk Rationality)
• It is in my best interest to behave in a way that I need everyone else to behave (Golden Rule Rationality)

I’m not articulating the essence of the distinction perfectly, so I’ll try and illustrate it through the example of voting. If the decision whether to vote is made without considering how other people should behave who are faced with that exact same decision, you get caught in the cycle described above. But if I approach the question of “should I vote?” from the perspective that every single person has to make the exact same decision and thus the conclusion needs to be the same, the answer is, rationally, “yes.” Just because economists understand the free rider problem doesn’t give them permission to perpetuate it.

So that’s a long-winded way of saying something you already know – vote, even though it doesn’t matter.

-Filed in Ideas, The Point