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Kevin comments on The Craigslist Revolution: a real-world application of torture vs. dust specks OR How I learned to stop worrying and create one billion dollars out of nothing - Less Wrong
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Comments (219)
I think this is a very strange situation. There's a billion dollar bill in the middle of the road, and it's been there for four years. Yes, we should figure out how we can pick it up, and use it to purchase utilons, but I think as a sub-question, we really really need to figure out why it hasn't been picked up. Because what Kevin is proposing sounds easy. I spend time on Facebook, and I've been invited to, and often joined, a ridiculous number of advocacy groups -- one million strong for Darfur, support breast cancer awareness, etc. I do not understand how a group hasn't already been started to claim this money for some popular cause, and I don't think we're going to be able to claim it ourselves unless we can understand that.
It sounds easy, but it's a little harder to get other people to do your bidding than I would like. I welcome someone with a good answer to why no one has picked this up, but I think it's just that no one else put together that this is an inefficiency in the marketplace that is fixable. I don't know; I think that there aren't a lot of people with the particular knowledge background I have that would lead to seeing this inefficiency and then acting on it. I'm also a fair amount better at spotting these market inefficiencies than the average person, which is why I don't have a real job.
I think there's a disconnect here because it's more complicated. You need to understand and believe in several key assumptions for this to seem possible, starting with an explanation of how atypical Craigslist is as a corporation. It really is the only corporation in the world of such influence that is basically run by communists.
Another thing that most people don't understand is that Craigslist does what the users tell them. People see statements from Craig and Jim to that effect, but there's another mental click that needs to take place for someone to understand that they really mean it.
The last time I did this my group only got to 150 people, probably 75 of whom were my friends. It's not too hard to get people to make that first join click but it's a lot harder to get them to go and invite 25 friends to join. So the problem is that people believe in the cause enough to initially join the group, but not enough to invite every one of their Facebook friends.