I can tell by how much people throw out and how many Amazon.com boxes litter the streets that people buy a lot that they don’t want. I presume Amazon’s people have found how to control people to buy junk.

People like the act of buying things. Maybe also receiving packages and opening them. They probably regret many of the things they buy, but they liked that feeling and the site designers figured out how to manipulate you to buy.

My idea is a browser add-on in which you tell it what sites you buy too much from and it hijacks the buy button so when you click it, it asks if you want to donate the cost of what you were going to buy to a charity. In a specified period of time, it sends you an email or something non-physical to replace the experience of receiving something.

Then when people feel compelled to buy something, many of them will end up donating to charity. At the moment they click, they know what amount they were about to spend on something frivolous. The site could ask if they want to split some of the money with the site–that is, you, if you went for it.

Alternatively, many people will browse less, knowing what browsing and craving too much will bring.

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I haven’t posted one of my ideas for a long time. This one seems viable and useful since so many people are addicted to buying things online.

• ← Goal isn’t to pollute “a little bit” less or even “a lot” less. It’s zero if you want to sustain human life and civilization.
• 620: Nature delivers what psychedelics do, but we don’t know what we’re missing (feat. Sam Harris and Roland Griffiths) →