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Re:18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1 by cortesoft on Monday November 16, 2015 @03:35PM (#10576964)
Ok, so I took away some work that they were going to pay someone for. What, though, are they going to do with that money they saved? They are probably going to spend it on something else, which will employ somebody. It just shifts where that money is spent.
Re:18F's Micro-Purchase Experiment: Why I Bid $1 by Jtsummers on Monday November 16, 2015 @05:50PM (#10577892)
Right. If we provide teachers to an area, we might be eliminating the teachers already present. More likely we're supplementing them. This is filling a need that a local economy may not be able to sustain on its own.

If we provide volunteer laborer a to a farmer who can afford hired hands, we're reducing the income to those in the local unskilled labor market.

Those are two extremes and most labor-giving and goods-giving fall in between. But we need to determine where it falls to determine whether is a positive or a negative.