I believe this topic is something that many TASers may have thought about. However, I would presume that the amount of material well-being enjoyed by anyone who has ever made a TAS is just staggering. I personally find it impossible to comprehend that (according to
https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-global-poverty) this is true:
1. Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty, that's less than $1.25 a day.
2. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.
3. 870 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat. Food banks are especially important in providing food for people that can’t afford it themselves. Run a food drive outside your local grocery store so people in your community have enough to eat. Sign up for Supermarket Stakeout.
4. More than 1 billion people lack adequate access to clean drinking water and an estimated 400 million of these are children. Because unclean water yields illness, roughly 443 million school days are missed every year.
5. In 2011, 165 million children under the age 5 were stunted (reduced rate of growth and development) due to chronic malnutrition.
If I have a personal computer and enough free time to make a single good TAS, I probably already belong to the top 1% of the richest persons alive. So, no, I do not need money to support my insanely sophisticated top-tier hobby. Neither do you. It is just stupid and narcissistic. The same is true for anyone who would pay just to see a TAS instead of donating that money to some charity. I could easily imagine myself paying a small amount to see a quality TAS of Monster World IV or some other game that I endorse, but in the broader context it all seems absolutely insane. Even evil.
How about some charity TAS event instead? Now, that's a worthy challenge to aim for! Not an easy task either! Hmm, maybe have multiple games with donation goals such that when the goal is reached, the TAS is made? Each TAS could be made by a single TASer who has vowed to make the TAS or by the community working together as a team? This could be done annually and the incentive for the TASers would be to prove themselves worthy by actually producing the TASes that they promised to do for a certain donation. Or maybe have a static donation goals for each game, say 1000$ and all tasable games are unlocked for donations from the start? When the 1000$ is raised, the TAS community vowes to produce a full TAS of the game in the next six months? Then the "points" we currently award for players could be counted by the amount of money your TAS projects have raised for charities.
Or how about enrolling some IT-people in Bangalore, India? They could create quality TASes for us lousy TAS wankers with a very low price. Our contacts could easily hire local homeless people or prostitutes and use them as TAS labor force. This might actually work. And all parties might be very happy about the situation too, even the homeless people.
If you want, you can, right now, find someone to TAS for you 12 hours every day with just 50$ a month. (Even rickshaw drivers in India don't make more than 200$ a month, and they are doing pretty well relatively speaking.) All the keys are in your hands. Just use the Internet to find a suitable contacts from some poor country (I would suggest India for its +1 technology trait), teach them the basics of the art of TASing and then pay them using any payment method you prefer. First you might get bad-quality work, but eventually you might get maybe 2-5 very high-quality TASes each month with just 50$. If fifty people offered just two dollars a month, it would be even better. In any case, your money would be totally wasted in the Western TAS market, so you should definitely focus your investments elsewhere. Maybe República de Colombia, North Korea or Finland?
In the meantime, enjoy the best hobby in the world!
