This is the problem. If people are thinking of themselves as consumers, rather than investors, then yes, you have a problem. This is why Kickstarter changed their rules on physical products, to not allow people to buy multiple quantities of something, in order to discourage people from treating it like a pre-order system.
Yeah, there's a certain amount of information asymmetry. I'm not sure you can ever do away with that, without killing the idea of crowdfunding entirely. If you require legal filings and financial disclosures and the like, all of a sudden you can't do it for small projects, you need to hire lawyers and accountants and things like that.
The best way to solve this is to convince people only to crowdfund people that they really trust. Don't look at an idea and say "hey, that's cool, I'll buy one of those." Look at the creator and say "this person can deliver, I'll give them some money to do so."
"...consumer..."
This is the problem. If people are thinking of themselves as consumers, rather than investors, then yes, you have a problem. This is why Kickstarter changed their rules on physical products, to not allow people to buy multiple quantities of something, in order to discourage people from treating it like a pre-order system.
Yeah, there's a certain amount of information asymmetry. I'm not sure you can ever do away with that, without killing the idea of crowdfunding entirely. If you require legal filings and financial disclosures and the like, all of a sudden you can't do it for small projects, you need to hire lawyers and accountants and things like that.
The best way to solve this is to convince people only to crowdfund people that they really trust. Don't look at an idea and say "hey, that's cool, I'll buy one of those." Look at the creator and say "this person can deliver, I'll give them some money to do so."