111–120 of 135 posts
Good article, but the author is a little rusty on his behavioral economics. The anomaly he refers to is not the endowment effect but the sunk cost fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost#Loss_aversion_and_the... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endowment_effect
It's actually humorous to me how many people here are expressing firm opinions about whether or not this is legal despite the fact that they clearly have no understanding of the complexities of gaming law in the United States. This is why I always tell people "ask a lawyer". Non-lawyers think they know far more than they really do. As someone whose startup has spent huge amounts of time and money on online gaming leg…
Yeah, it's been a while since I've boned up on my online gaming/online poker stuff, but I would consider myself an expert on marketplace dynamics and structures (as we invented our own structure for Dawdle.com). This meets all the requirements of an auction site, and by a country mile.
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"How is this any different than operating a casino?" Operating a casino requires a license for a start afaik, and there are checks to ensure things are fair. How do we know the winning bidders actually exist? I agree people should be able to make their own minds up in the main, but they should be doing that safe in the knowledge that they are being treated fairly.
Isn't that endemic to any auction site? eBay knows your max bid and could easily have bots forcing up the incremental bids to earn themselves more fees. Perhaps all auction sites should be audited, but I don't see how this one is any worse than the rest. And sadly the licensing requirements for online casinos are a joke. Read up on the Kahnawakee Gaming Commission some time, you'll get a kick out of it. Until we lega…
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Isn't that endemic to any auction site? eBay knows your max bid and could easily have bots forcing up the incremental bids to earn themselves more fees. Perhaps all auction sites should be audited, but I don't see how this one is any worse than the rest. And sadly the licensing requirements for online casinos are a joke. Read up on the Kahnawakee Gaming Commission some time, you'll get a kick out of it. Until we lega…
This is actually a really good point. Why does anyone entrust eBay with knowledge of their maximum bid? A hypothetical shill-bot 9000 could easily bid up auctions without ever having to worry about accidentally having to own the item. It seems like it would be far better to have your own bidbot handle things for you...
I was working remotely for a company at the time, so gave them 2 months notice and started developing, with the intention of launching a similar company in Canada in 6 months time. I had another Canadian partner, and started looking into all facets of the idea. The site development went fairly straight forward and allowed me the chance to return to web development after 5 years of Mac and Windows application development.
We had contacted the best law firm we could find with experience in gaming and intellectual property. After spending a fairly large sum of money to get a risk assessment, it was clear that the idea was definitely illegal. Because many people were paying for the chance to win a product, it was online gaming and illegal in Canada. We had a few options, none of which were very reassuring.
I am rambling now, but I just wanted to mention that I paid nearly $10K to have this looked into by lawyers, quit my job to implement it, and moved back to Canada from Finland to go ahead with the project. I am stunned that this is being done in the US, and am no going to be surprised at all when it goes bad for them. If it doesn't, then I made the wrong bet of calling it quits.
On a side note, if anyone wants to buy a nearly completed site with the same idea as this, feel free to contact me.
So I have a personal experience with this idea. I was living in Finland for the past year and a half, and came across this same idea with a site called fiksuhuuto.fi. I didn't have any moral opposition to the idea, because I believe that its no different than any other sort of lottery or game of chance. Adults should have the right to risk their money for the possibility of reward. I was working remotely for a compan…
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No. Capitalism is a system of decentralised decision making on resource allocation, ultimately leading to increased productivity and innovation. I have no idea how a ponzi scheme that makes "simple" people overpay fits this description as it leads to incredibly bad resource allocation. You could argue that such failures are part of capitalism and I would agree. But they are still failures. Capitalism depends on such…
You said: Capitalism is a system of decentralised decision making on resource allocation, ultimately leading to increased productivity and innovation. You cannot insert a result into a definition. P may or may not imply Q.
So I have a personal experience with this idea. I was living in Finland for the past year and a half, and came across this same idea with a site called fiksuhuuto.fi. I didn't have any moral opposition to the idea, because I believe that its no different than any other sort of lottery or game of chance. Adults should have the right to risk their money for the possibility of reward. I was working remotely for a compan…
I've always been fascinated with the game theory, math, and psychology behind these schemes. There's a bunch of variations of the auction model that can guarantee or nearly guarantee a profit. One of the more popular auction models is to make the winner the person with the lowest unique bid, but it costs to place bids.
The lowest bid game is equivalent to simply giving it to the last person who bid isn't it?
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So does the government and many charities, the entire city of Las Vegas and churches on Saturday nights across the country, every major sports league (not often directly), etc etc etc. Pretty much every business takes advantage of the fact that the consumer is lacking something, whether that's knowledge, time, money or material. It's the way capitalism works.
Good point; it's like a stupid people tax. Unfortunately it's tricky for even smart people to avoid some of them.