From the FAQ: "Could local environmental organisms change the starter? Possibly. Some microbiologists did a study on how stable established strong and healthy starters are and they found that essentially, a strong starter out-competes other organisms in the environment and keeps its characteristics. This is what we have found with our starter. It continues with its characteristics since we have been providing it."
Ah yes, the corruption power of all the money they must be making with that extra $0.05 when they ask to mail $2.00 for an international stamp that costs $1.95...
Let's take (over) 65,000 starts distributed since 2000 on the Carl's friends site[1] - and call it 65k for rounding.
That's 65k starters, with your negative unhelpful comment assuming $0.05 / 5¢ "profit" per starter.
That's 325,000¢ - or $3250 USD "made" in nearly a quarter of a century.
That "profit" discounts 24 years of:
- PO Box rental
- web hosting
- domain fees
- labels and bags for starters to go out in
- envelopes, if the one provided isn't suitable or sufficient
- electricity for refrigeration and freezing of starters
- ingredients for feeding and maintaining the starters
$3250 over 24 years gives a mean of $135 per year -- obviously this will fluctuate from year to year, and costs have risen since the early 00's -- likewise there have probably been more requests as the internet has grown more popular, and the word of Carl's friend spread further.
If you think ~$135 (or even ~$100 on a slow year) is sufficient for everything above -- never mind the time and work donated by the growers and keeper of the mail box -- then you're very much mistaken.
Furthermore, if you think they're being "paid" for their work out of that, your misanthropic and "negative nancy" response, is sorely mistaken.
Of course, all of this presumes that every item is international shipping, and paid for in the "substituted" two $1 bills, or IRC.
1. For US domestic shipping, they just ask for a 63¢ self-addressed and stamped envelope [2]
2. For your profit-implying "they want you to pay them" comment, see:
"Requests sent outside the US require $1.55 US postage *or* substitute two U.S. one-dollar bills or an IRC (International Reply Coupon)" [2]
Note the "or" part -- it's a choice, not a mandate.
Firstly, you can send them what it costs, $1.55, as you like - via PayPal, cash in an envelope, whatever. Their "two $1 bills" option is handy for places like Canada which may have US note currency -- and the IRC is useful in places that don't have US currency in regular circulation.
Secondly, many places don't actually sell international reply coupons any more. While the UPU mandates their acceptance and swapping for postage, they don't mandate the sale of IRCs [3]. For example, Royal Mail (in the UK) hasn't sold them since December 2011 -- therefore requiring the use of PayPal, finding $2 in bills somehow, or sending the $1.95 in change.
If you think Carl's friends have somehow become massively rich over the past quarter-century by checks notes mailing out carefully-maintained 1847 sourdough starter, likely at a loss... please let us know how you've worked that one out.
