I certainly see the point they are trying to convey, but this is a bad analogy.
The Red Cross receives funding through donations and/or government subsidies. The donuts really are not their core product, if anything they would be more akin to a retail 'loss leader'.
The average web startup only has one core product, at least it gets to the Facebook scale of having thread its way into multiple aspects of your life. These startups are only getting their money through venture investors, who most certainly do not view their checks as 'donations'. So, there is a basic requirement to transition from free to revenue generation in some fashion.
The troops most likely saw the donuts as a small token offering from the Red Cross, and also felt they had done something to earn these free donuts. While there is a lot of feelings of entitlement among some customers of free services, I think the bulk of the users understand the company has to make money somehow.
In many cases the 'freemium' model appears to work well, as long as the paid versions offer obvious value. I wouldn't recommend for most people to not offer some free version of the product, but I also wouldnt warn them against charging for their products via a story about Red Cross donuts.
This reminded me a lot of what happened to Netflix last year when they spun off the streaming service into its own $8/month product. Existing customers who were already receiving it for "free" were totally livid, despite the fact that people in Canada, who didn't have the DVD service, and could only buy the $8 streaming service had no problem at all.
Predictably Irrational covers the case of an Israeli day care center, though it's actually a slightly different story - in that case, the parents felt an implicit moral duty not to pick their kids up late, which vanished once the cost was quantified (in terms of a 'late pickup fee'), causing more parents to pick up their kids late, even though it was technically free before.
More importantly, when the fee was removed again, parents continued late pickups at the higher (with-fee) rate. That's the real point of both stories - once the terms of the agreement have been moved from the social to the monetary realm, it's very hard to get people's brains to switch back to the social terms.
yeah, quantifying the costs says "It's fine, as long as you pay extra." If it's $10/hr extra, hey, that's an extra hour of day care for $10.....
Then when you remove the price you are sending another signal, which is "oh it used to cost money but now we offer this for free!
It's worth really thinking through the whole social signal thing first....
with the Red Cross, one option might have been a donation box right next to the donuts with a note saying what they had been asked to do and why.... and soliciting additional donations, to be used to provide donuts to the British soldiers, perhaps! That avoids changing the relationship.....
Well, I'm not sure if my emotional attachment to Google is comparable to that of wartime soldiers to free doughnuts. What's left is the fact that a free service is very different from a paid service, and that pulling the rug under your customers is going to leave them very disgruntled. I am not sure this is a novel insight. I guess the historical analogy is still neat.
Perhaps a way to prevent the reaction from a change in category is to discontinue and rebrand the product.
If the Red Cross had shut down the donut stations and then came back some time later with comfort food in a modified form, the soldiers would see the new stations independent of their anchor to the previously free stations.
I think there's also a bit of entitlement. I don't intend to imply the negative connotations. However, these soldiers are putting their lives on the line, so is a free doughnut so much to ask?
Indeed, the fault lies with SecDef for the change. And the change affected a certain aspect of morale. But the suggested change would most certainly have been noticed. If Red Cross was the only place to get this item, then it dried up, then someone else made them available, even at a pittance, the entitlement sentiment exists and colors the experience.
Yes. I'm sure milesokeefe suggested it because discontinuing a product and then relaunching it is standard practice for companies which want to get rid of anchoring biases.
(And I'm not sure I'd say that trying to evade cognitive biases is a "trick", really.)
I think it's better for smart people not to have patronizing attitudes about the rest of humanity, but that's just me.
I also think that charitable gestures towards men risking their lives and suffering great hardship to protect entire civilizations are categorically a different thing from a commercial product. I think the troops probably felt this way as well, which is really the crux of the whole issue, isn't it?
There's a massive difference between "here's a little something to say thanks for fighting for our country" and "doughnuts for sale"--and one is hardly a substitute for the other.
There's a massive difference between "here's a little something to say thanks for fighting for our country"
Why should that gesture be coming from the Red Cross, an organisation that's supposed to transcend nationalities and help all people regardless of politics?
You're probably confusing the International Committee of the Red Cross (which is the organization you're describing) with the American Red Cross (which is explicitly American, and assists US troops overseas along with other charitable activities).
As for the moral value of providing a gesture of thanks to people who are literally fighting the Nazis, I'll let you work that out for yourself.
Firstly, yes, I was confusing the international versus american. My apologies.
Secondly, fuck you for that second statement (and somewhat implying that my morals are twisted). Those kinds of judgement calls are exactly why the Red Cross and MSF are apolitical. "Fuck those guys over there, they're -foo-" is precisely what these organisations area against, a core part of why they were formed.
I think you wouldn't have so many negative experiences with the moderation on HN if you refrained from telling people "fuck you".
As for the substance of your remark, I actually agree with the mission of MSF and ICRC. I just also happen to agree with the mission of stopping the Nazis, albeit after the fact. It's odd that you've gone so far out of your way to imply you feel otherwise.
Have a look through my posting history and see how many times I've said that. As for 'not being downmodded much', you can't see it, but that 'fuck you' comment is actually my highest modded comment in my first page of listings. Surprised me, yes, but that's the way it is.
The reason why I said it was that your condescending comment was not only extremely patronising, it was wrong. The story above took place in 1942. The allies didn't even accept that the Final Solution was taking place until 1944. Yes, Jews were being shipped off to concentration camps - so were the Japanese in the US. This was not something particularly immoral to the public of the day.
The simple question is this: If "but they're nazis!" is the all-powerful "I win" moral trump card of the day, why did the US wait two years before joining the war, and even then only doing so because they were attacked?
It's odd that you've gone so far out of your way to imply you feel otherwise.
Another condescending, patronising remark, showing that you're more interested in belittling me than understanding what I have to say. Just because I support apolitical care organisations doesn't mean I want genocide to proceed - and I don't believe you really think I am implying that.
Genocide turned out to be the high order bit, but even in 1942 the Nazis were clearly bad news on account of conquering Europe and starting World War II.
I'll just note that the United States gets criticized for not rushing into war against aggressive dictators about as often as it gets criticized for actually doing so. The record of the other Western allies is little better on that account, as they explicitly abandoned Czechoslovakia and implicitly abandoned Poland, Norway, Denmark, and even France.
The troops probably have the same range of intelligence as everybody else. And the PR problem is mainly with those on one end of the continuum, not the other.
This is why "underpromise, overdeliver" is so important in managing customers. People develop expectations very quickly, and then are delighted or disappointed depending on how things turn out relevant to their expectations.
So were the soldiers. They paid taxes, so they were funding the donuts via the US government.
But that's not the point. The soldiers perceived the donuts as free, and people perceive Facebook as free. Charging for donuts or access to your wall will change that perception.
The Red Cross receives funding through donations and/or government subsidies. The donuts really are not their core product, if anything they would be more akin to a retail 'loss leader'.
The average web startup only has one core product, at least it gets to the Facebook scale of having thread its way into multiple aspects of your life. These startups are only getting their money through venture investors, who most certainly do not view their checks as 'donations'. So, there is a basic requirement to transition from free to revenue generation in some fashion.
The troops most likely saw the donuts as a small token offering from the Red Cross, and also felt they had done something to earn these free donuts. While there is a lot of feelings of entitlement among some customers of free services, I think the bulk of the users understand the company has to make money somehow.
In many cases the 'freemium' model appears to work well, as long as the paid versions offer obvious value. I wouldn't recommend for most people to not offer some free version of the product, but I also wouldnt warn them against charging for their products via a story about Red Cross donuts.