

“Stealing Money from Customers to Reroute into Projects we Believe in.” - benjaminlotan

Hey HN, what do you think of our strategy? The quote is one way we think about what we are doing right now at Social Printshop. I thought it was a good idea to tell our customers directly, so i explained everything to a mashable reporter and some of my thoughts were covered in a somewhat popular article last week. The response has been mixed, in terms of feedback via email etc.,  but overall I support the idea of honesty and full disclosure and I wanted to open up more of a discussion here on HN.<p>I am generally against consumerism, and hesitant to fully embrace capitalism, but I saw the creation of a start-up as a great way to raise capital to address issues of sustainability, social justice, and the many conflicts deeply embedded in our culture.<p>Before you start doling out heavy handed criticism, I propose that you would think a bit about how you are (or are not) addressing contemporary social/political conflicts with your start-up.
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mindcrime
Interesting... I haven't read the Mashable article, so I don't have all the
context to fully appreciate this. But I can say that I don't advocate
stealing! Not sure if that was a metaphor or what, but I wouldn't want to
steal a dime from a customer.

However, I do have some political issues that are near and dear to my heart;
hence my run for Lt. Governor of NC in 2008. But, realistically, I don't want
to be a politician and it's near impossible to get elected as a 3rd party
candidate anyway. And since I _am_ an unabashed fan of Capitalism, my thinking
these days is to launch a startup, try to acquire significant wealth, and then
spend that wealth supporting the causes I believe in. Of course I want to do
some good along the way, and one way to do that is contributing to Open Source
Software (which is something I believe in very strongly as well). So all of
our code is freely available, licensed under the APLv2.

If the startup ever gets off the ground and we reach a point where it's
practical, I'd also like to arrange some (hopefully) mutually beneficial ways
to help poor people in rural areas as well, mainly through education. Having
grown up dirt poor in a rural area myself, I'm a big believer in the power of
education to help people raise themselves up. So going back and arranging for
free classes on technology topics, entrepreneurship, etc., would be something
I hope to do someday. As you can probably tell, I am big on the "teach a
person to fish" vs "give them a fish" thing.

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mikerhoads
Wasn't familiar the story but after Google + skimming it: Don't use the word
stealing, its not accurate. You are providing a service+product that some
people find valuable and they are paying you for it.

I honestly don't see the controversy unless there's more that I'm missing.

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benjaminlotan
oh and here is the link to the article i references. pretty poorly written and
topical, but i like the title and some aspects + discussion of ego.
<http://on.mash.to/hl2ddT>

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benjaminlotan
shoot i should have also made it clear that i am not talking about literally
stealing. Obviously we would not do that.

