Why should I? givedanabuck.com is a website aiming at raising $1 million through $1 donations from random people. Where will that money go? MacBook Airs, fancy dinners and maybe some angel funding for various start-ups that the webmaster deems interesting. He says that if the Million Dollar page and Facebook can so easily convince people to give away money, why couldn’t he?

Well, newsflash: all of those other ventures give something back. There is a perceived “return-on-investment”, however small or not-very-useful that may be, for the people that give that dollar. They don’t simply throw it away. Because of that value we have chain e-mails claiming that AOL and Microsoft will give some guy money for every person that reads and forwards the mail: it is an idiotic claim but it gets people to hit the “Forward” button, they get to feel good about themselves.

Dan talks of the Internet empowering people and how this experiment wants to show raising this kind of money can be done. My impression is that the whole project is nothing more than a reason for Dan to chuckle as he watches his Paypal account balance slowly increasing. An analysis of how many idiots are eager to burn their money on nothing.

To sum up his buzzspeak: “I want to get a million dollars. I have no smart way of doing it, nothing to contribute to anything, but if you would like to give me some of your money, I’ll take it gladly. I can assume some people are stupid enough to think of this as some cool, novel idea, so click the big paypal button!”

So if anybody wants to give me some money, leave a comment. I will use the money to bankroll my next laptop, buy some security books and maybe take a trip to Vegas or Cuba. I’ll send you a picture if I get to either of those two locations in exchange for your kindness. You pay postage, of course.¹

UPDATE: I would not be all that surprised if the project somewhat caught on. Especially as there is no deadline so no real rush of any sort. And as money does come in, Dan could actually invest them in some start-ups to show a sign of good will - that will definitely stimulate more people to donate. We’ll see.

1. Yes, I am being sarcastic. I’ll just post those pictures on Flickr =P [↩]