Real cases
A case · you decide
Rake and the one-dollar pledge
Rake — the take-rate, met by a teen backing a friend’s project with a dollar
A crowdfunding platform advertises that it keeps 5% of what a project raises. A teen pledges $1 to a friend’s project, and a cousin pledges $100.
Say the platform keeps 5%, Kickstarter’s published cut, and pays a card processor at Stripe’s standard US rate, 2.9% + 30¢ for each payment. (A worked example with two real, published rates, read 2026-11-07; it does not say which processor any platform uses.)
Rake’s cut is one layer. The card fee is a second layer, in two parts: a percentage, and a fixed amount per payment.
Which pledge loses the bigger share of itself to fees?
The teen pledged $5 instead of five separate dollars, and wrote the stacked rate on the class board under the advertised one.
A case · you decide
Mira and the average creator
Mira — the median maker on a creator platform, as a teen writes a report about it
The platform's press release: creators earn an average of $5,000 a year. The teen's simulation shows the median creator earning $40.
When a tiny group earns huge amounts, they pull the mean far above what a typical creator makes. That's a heavily skewed distribution.
The median is the creator in the exact middle: half earn less, half earn more.
A classmate asks what she would probably earn if she joined. Which number should the report lead with?
The report's first chart shows the median. Two classmates who wanted to go full-time creator read it twice.
A case · you decide
Rake and Flora set the payout floor
Flora & Rake — the payout floor, working with the platform's take-rate
The platform wants to raise the payout floor from $10 to $100 to cut its transfer costs.
Rake points out that transfer fees are real costs for the platform.
But the simulation shows most small creators never reach $100, so their earnings sit unpaid, sometimes for good.
What should the platform do?
The teen runs all three options in the simulation and puts the three numbers side by side for the class to argue about.
A case · you decide
Zipf and Dex follow a take-rate cut
Zipf & Dex — a 17-year-old writing an economics essay on a video platform's new policy
A platform announces it will cut its cut from 30% to 20% "to support creators." Leila has the earnings data: the top 1% of creators earn most of the money, and most creators earn only a few dollars a month.
Zipf's curve is steep. A tiny head earns thousands; the long tail earns almost nothing.
Dex asks who actually gains. A lower take-rate raises every creator's share by the same proportion.
Who gains the most money from the change?
On a steep curve, "everyone gets more" usually means the head gets most of it.