Exactly. I don't 'follow' what's on Kickstarter, but have scored some very, very, innovative and well-made things that used Kickstarter campaigns - these were made by true innovators/mavericks who had a vision and just wanted it done well ... quite the opposite of a lot of dominant corporate ethos.We are allowed to. We as customers can assume some of the risk as a means of expediting the production of the scope. We're encouraging a business to produce something by giving them a risk free loan.
Seems like this is becoming more normal with businesses launching things on Kickstarter. The difference there is that the early purchasers (lenders) are getting a discounted product when they are early buyers on Kickerstarter.
Their ideas spread by word-of-mouth, we effectively crowdsourced the funding, and allowed a product to come to market that would never have made it via the existing models. Old textbook economic and marketing theory are out of date.