Xombies are Intelligent people. At least most of them. Intelligence is an integral qualifying criteria of a true Xombie.

Here are some facts about the Hunger Site:

Started in 1999 as a charity, the hunger site is no longer a charity or a not for profit organization. CharityUSA, the current owners, operate many click-to-donate websites and have never disclosed the amount donated to charities.

I am not sold on the idea of click to feed the hungry for the following reasons:

Non-availability of food is rarely a cause of hunger. It is usually corruption, mismanagement, and hoarding. You will only be encouraging the above three malices by clicking on the website. Donations like this actually may undermine the food security of a people, as in what happens when the website’s owners decide to remove the plug. It happened when Mr Breen sold the website to the Greatergood and again when Greatergood sold it to CharityUSA. A good example is the loan waiver for the farmers in India by the Government in light of suicides. The suicides did not stop, because the loans were never the primary reason for them giving up their lives.

Food aids also usually end up screwing the local production efforts and may even change the market dynamics in the locale. Moreover most of these aids amount to food dumping of worthless goods, which may actually be downright dangerous rather than of a decent quality. It also creates dependencies on imported products. A very good example is the wheat in Bangladesh. Even during the Balkans crisis, WHO had to put up a website asking companies to stop sending aid products. In particular as much as 50% of the medicines sent were out of date, much food was downright dangerous, or the products were un-needed. Some companies went to the extent of insisting that unneeded products were part of the package and refused to send anything till, the unneeded goods were also accepted.

The money generated from the clicks is obviously going to multinational food and pharma companies which are making a neat buck out of tax savings and getting rid of overproduction.

Last but not the least; If you click everyday, you are wasting so much of your time and bandwidth just for opening the heavy sponsored ads pages that you are actually paying more than what hunger site is contributing for your click. After you click, you are taken to another ad heavy page which wastes more of your bandwidth. A better idea would be to just donate some money to your favorite charity, so at least you know where your money is going. This way you can save a lot of your time also, which you can use effectively elsewhere.

For the above reasons, I think Instant Karma is not so good an idea and I am not clicking to feed the poor. I’d rather give a candy to a poor child everyday.