I just found the site 5 minutes a go.

I still can't stop laughing.

This is so marvelously stupid, I love it.

  What do I get for contributing money to the hole?
  A deeper hole. What else are you going to buy, an iPod?

What depresses me is the fact that $77k can easily run a startup for over a year in my country.

This is perhaps part of a lesson they're trying to teach.

Every one of us can think of ways this money, or any lump of money, could be put to good use. But instead it's being used to dig a huge hole.

And the same thought can be applied to many things in our economy. Gargantuan wastes of resources that __could__ be used to do good, but are instead squandered on pointless work. And none of us do anything about it, we just sit around and go "herp derp let the market solve everything".

This stunt highlights some of the naked stupidity of our society and how it allocates resources.

Seems similar, since the average startup temporarily employs people and results in nothing (although over a longer period of time).

The opportunity cost of the people digging the hole should be lower, and at the end, at least they'll have a hole. A clear win over the median startup.

Besides, they are literally changing the world.

Awe, hey we end up with more than a empty hole! What about all of the dead code!

Also often wastes fuel, time and other precious resources manufacturing physical swag that will end up in trash cans after the company inevitably dies. Externalities of the hole are at least related to the hole itself.

ahahha! Indeed, good point. Startup economy consists in a lot of hole digging...

And I'm sure someone somewhere is depressed by the fact that some startup's funding could be used to feed thousands of starving children instead.

Or dig a deeper hole.

That would be depressing if that was the only $77k out there, in the grand scheme of finances that amount is ridiculously small.

Existing startups won't get any less money and research won't get any less grants because some folks take donations to dig a hole :)

is that startup going to force 1,000s of creative people to stop what they are doing and think about something broader for a few minutes?

it's genius

Yea, but we get a hole out of this, so I'd say it's a net win.

True, but most startups leave the world worse than they found it. At least this way all that happens is a hole gets dug.

Well those $77k are helping run CAH! They are making a huge profit on this, and they deserve every penny of it :)

I think you're vastly underestimating the cost of the equipment, land, operators etc. The three pieces of heavy equipment would be >$5000/day. Plus 3 shifts of 3 skilled people would be another $1500/day. Plus the cost of the land, I'd guess they have 5-10 acres, and even super cheap land in the US is $1000/acre. Plus stripe fees. So $75k after fees - $10k in land - at least $6500/day and the current numbers will have them going for 3 days so $20k. If they make $30k in profit on this I'll be very surprised.

They did have a Black Friday sale once where everything was marked up. IIRC, they had some pretty impressive sales that day. They also did one where you send them money and get nothing in return (a donation?).

good chance the hole diggers are ex-google or ex-facebook or ex-something with boatloads of money.

The top contributions are baffling. Some people are donating over $1k USD.

Think of it as advertising, most of them have a domain name in there.

It's for advertising. Like meh.com (known for weird humor, like reverse psychological sales pitch).

I think the "it's for advertising" excuse is actually the cherry on the top of this satirical turd pile. It highlights ever so nicely the feeling we all have that money thrown at advertising instead of used for buying actual things or paying people for actual services is somehow equivalent to throwing it into a hole. Yet, it's the advertisers choosing to do this. That's what makes it brilliant. Getting advertisers to literally throw their advertising budget into a hole, and when we ask why these sums are there, we are given the excuse, well, "it's advertising." As if that excuses it, in such a matter-of-fact way that we are supposed to accept it without question, as if it should somehow be obvious that that's not a waste of money. Amazing.

Almost every large consumer facing company has a huge advertising budget.

And they have for a very good reason.

People are easily manipulated, and advertising is subconscious manipulation.

I abhor all ads, and I never get how Americans actually willingly watch TV with the constant garbage thats stuffed into your brain. (it's not nearly as bad in most of Europe)

But then again, our economic model is dependent on driving demand (aka on people continuing to buy stuff, always more stuff), so it all works out.

Just see advertising as the necessary grease in the economic engine that is endless consumption.

I'd say they have very large advertising budgets for a fairly bad reason: advertisers for the most part throw shit at the wall to see what sticks.

There's some science, but the advertising here is a perfect example that many people have no idea how to spend their ad money in a way that meaningfully engages some target audience.

I'd say they have very large advertising budgets for a fairly bad but different reason: they're making useless crap nobody needs, and so is everybody else, so the product will drown in the sea of useless crap and will never make any profit unless a massive amount of money is used to make it stand out from that sea of junk. Of course, everybody else is trying to do the same...

The way I see it, capitalism doesn't work when people behave rationally in self-interest, because if they did, they would buy a fraction of what they do. Advertising exists to persuade people to act irrationally in the interest of a company.

And now you and everyone else that visits the site have seen their business URLs

I never saw any URLs.

And we're not going to buy anything from them, since their products price includes this kind of "cost".

And their competitors' prices might include $2k in a safari trip to kill endangered species[1]. You monster.

[1] http://mashable.com/2011/03/31/godaddy-ceo-elephant/

I think the fact that advertising persists in such widespread forms is pretty good proof of its efficacy.

Study after study shows that even if you think you're immune from advertising you still gain a positive outlook on a brand just from familiarity/repetition alone, nevermind if you agree with the content of the advertisement.

Hmm, as opposed to what? A red bull wing suit event, is that the progress you were looking for?

That's because, to those people, $1k USD is effectively nothing.

Well note that they are using it for cheap advertising