Herald on Sunday: Windfalls from web unlimited for some

Lucy Knight.

When reading today of the enormous sums that can be raised for deserving people through a website, many may have mixed feelings. The well of personal generosity is deep and the internet makes giving much easier. No coins to find, no forms to fill and cheques to sign, a website can present a need and payment can be made immediately. More than that, the site can keep you in touch with the case or cause that has touched your heart. When your response is multiplied by the global reach of the web, there is no limit to the riches someone could receive.

To the great credit of the husband of Lucy Knight - adding to the credit she deserves for going to the aid of a woman whose bag was being snatched outside an Auckland supermarket - he has closed the account their friends opened on the Givealittle site that has raised nearly $270,000 for her. Peter Thomas' wife is still in hospital after the skull fracture and brain bleed she suffered in the attack.

Money is no compensation for serious injury, nor can it adequately express the admiration we have for someone who puts themselves at risk to help a complete stranger. That is why there is no limit to the reward when it is "crowd funded" in this way.

The misgivings we explore in a special report today on page 12 have to do with fairness to all who suffer a misfortune. Yale psychologist Paul Bloom points out that personal generosity is highly selective. It is based on feelings of empathy with a person in need. It favours people we find attractive or share our ethnic identity, or their interests or family resemble ours, or they have done something we admire. Empathy, he explains, is insensitive to social data.

This country's social scientists could vouch for that. They have spent years compiling statistics on child poverty and the subject barely registered in the recent election campaign. If parents of the 250,000 New Zealand children living below the statistical poverty line could tap into crowd funding, some of them might be better off than they are on state support. Some, but probably not many.

Crowd funding will always favour identifiable individuals over statistical groups, which is why it can never replace social welfare. The question will be whether governments can take crowd funding into account to give more to those who depend on public funds? Probably not. People expect equal treatment from the state regardless of independent assistance.

Private charity may be inequitable but the impulse to give cannot and should not be discouraged. It the web can turn misfortune into a windfall for some, they deserve it.