Hacking- Don’t worry, I won’t.

After hearing about the Hacking as an act of faith current event today, I wanted to look into it a little more, (but not too much, my Dell has enough problems as it is). The term hacking has always freaked me out a little. It’s rarely if ever used in a positive light. I think that this hacking situation is a little bizarre, but I also like the fact that they are doing good with it. I always say, some of the craziest people are the smartest. They are using the “evil” term for hacking in a good way, and I think that’s really smart of them. I would be cautious when searching for these hackers though, because there are many out there who we all know are not using their hacking skills for the better. Something about the www.ihackcharities.org situation that bothers me is the fact that although they’ve found 120 hackers from around the world, how do we know all these hackers aren’t really just screwing charities over? Like I said, these guys are smart, smart enough to crack this system too. I don’t know enough about hacking (thank God), but if these guys really are ALL doing this for the better of charities, I think this is an awesome idea. I would just stay cautious, because you never know what new “company” is going to come up with a hacking for nonprofit idea, and screw a lot of people over.

Tax Exemptions

So after reading a number of posts on this topic, I’ve decided I don’t necessarily believe people, who donate money, should receive a tax break. I mean, why do people need a reward for donating money? After all, it was their decision to do so. Must there always be an incentive other than a “warm fuzzy feeling” to persuade donors into giving money to charities?

I guess I don’t necessarily think tax deductibles are bad things, but do we really need them? I wonder… How much of a change do you think there would be in donations to non-profit organizations if people didn’t receive tax deductions for their contribution? Just wondering, but it kind of makes me consider how “giving” we really are. After all, everything charity related seems to have some sort of materialistic incentive to doing good more times than not. Someone discussed the charities we used to do as children earlier in the posts. I realize that some like the Salvation Army were truly “giving” without a materialistic incentive, but usually the charities did have some sort of reward like pizza parties or ice cream socials for the biggest collectors/donors.  It’s really surprising to me that we’ve been expecting rewards for giving since we were young.  Do you think it was wrong of our mentors/teachers to bribe us with these rewards? Did it send the wrong message? or was it harmless? I can’t lie to myself, I did enjoy the pizza.