Most of the romantics sending e-cards didn't plan on spending all that time filling out e-mail addresses and typing a message withoutexpecting something in return.
More than half of people using the service only pay others withoutexpecting to get paid on Flattr, which suggests that our give to get rule is outdated.
The Supreme Court has said that for a transfer to be a tax-free gift for the recipient, the donor must be acting out of "detached and disinterested generosity" and withoutexpecting any economic benefit.
In my current company, we have definitely been guilty in the past of throwing people into the breech and expecting them to suddenly develop manager skills without any formal training.
Even a Kickstarter dream dubbed Pebble would be borderline useless without an online link, and as consumer demands shift dramatically towards expecting more for less, it's the carriers who have found themselves positioned to take advantage.
Green Mountain seemed to have adopted the policy of explaining this only to a handful of influential analysts, expecting that it would make the rounds of important investors that way, without making any mass-media splash.