An interesting critique of crowdfunding.

If one actually paid a decent wage to all of the people involved in helping with the campaign, one would be loosing much of the money raised. The production costs of organizing a €10000 campaign will have already used up some of the funds for the project that is to be executed when funded. The actual costs of organizing, raising money and carrying out the campaign are therefore not funded. It is the people who actually do most of the work (the campaigner) who are not paid enough (if anything at all) and then only if the project is successful, i.e. if the amount of funding requested has been raised.

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

An essay by Bertrand Russell from 1932.