Many of these comments treat "kickstarter" as a homogenous group of companies. Each project on Kickstarter is different, and the resulting liabilities would be different. In many of the most successful cases, the funding is tied to a pre-order of a product. In that case, the company has an obligation to the funder to deliver the product (or possibly refund the cash). Whether the funder acts on that obligation is a separate question, but s/he is a creditor to the company.