Carson King, a 24-year-old Iowa State fan, prepared his sign for ESPN’s“College GameDay.” It read, “Busch Light Supply Needs Replenished”
followed by his Venmo handle. Carson didn’t expect much. “College GameDay”
boasts hundreds of clever, grammatically-correct, well-designed signs each week,
so why would his sign – a simple black-Sharpie-on-a-white-background piece – go
viral? Carson fully expected himself to end up in the poor class with income Y1.
After all, the odds that your sign is spotted in the crowd and people actually overcome the bystander affect to send a random
stranger money for beer must be pretty low. This result depends on so many
variables outside of his control, and he anticipated π1 to be
greater than π2.
One week later, Carson received a grand total of about
$270,000. That’s a pretty good haul for a week, and I would say – for the week
at least – Carson found himself in the rich class with income more like Y2.
Carson’s poster experiment represents a small-scale,
real-world scenario of the equation we looked at in class. Before arriving at “GameDay,”
Carson had no idea of whether his poster would bring him any money at all. He
didn’t expect hundreds of thousands of dollars, and any small event could’ve changed
the outcome. Traffic could’ve made him late to the show, or he could’ve broken
his arm, preventing him from hoisting his glorious sign. Carson accepted that he
could end up either in the rich or poor class and tried anyways.
His B value was pretty high as well. Instead of keeping the
money to pay for his education, rent, or an Iron Throne made of Busch Light, he
kept about $15 in order to buy exactly one case of beer as promised. The rest of the roughly
$269,985 is getting matched by Venmo and Busch and donated to the University of
Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital. Carson clearly values redistribution.
Count him as a “yes” towards the class’ redistribution-policy vote.
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