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The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

independent.co.uk

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Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#61

Post by floren »

jeffbee wrote: post #41
roksprok wrote: post #27

Craigslist is often held up as an example of a company "doing it right", but what is never mentioned in these posts is that a large portion of their revenue comes from facilitating scams. Around 25% of rooms/apartments I contact are scams, and Craigslist has so far done nothing to prevent these. A common scam is to take pictures from a real estate site of a house that recently sold and advertise it as for rent, but t…

Craigslist doesn't even charge for rental listings, do they? I thought they only charge for help wanted ads.

They now charge to list your car, even as a private party. I'm not sure it was the right choice because it drove so much traffic to Facebook Marketplace, which is an absolute disaster.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#62

Post by micro2588 »

gottorf wrote: post #19
zuzululu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is the place for very few people to get wealthy relatively compared to the rest is more accurate. I don't know how long this asymmetric upside down pyramid structure will hold. Monopoly on violence requires participants to believe in its continuity, any fracture in perception no matter how small, will create an increasingly chaotic redistribution effect.

"The rest" is still quite wealthy, even by today's developed economy standards. Median household disposable income is higher in Mississippi, a state widely panned for its poverty, than Germany, the richest major EU nation. In American discourse, there's a ton of talk about inequality from the haves against the have-mores, pushing policy that often times will lead to worse outcomes for the have-nots.

median household income is not higher in missisippi vs germany, especially not true if you adjust for the value of healthcare, education, and social benefits including time off work.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#63

Post by [deleted] »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
zuzululu wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is the place for very few people to get wealthy relatively compared to the rest is more accurate. I don't know how long this asymmetric upside down pyramid structure will hold. Monopoly on violence requires participants to believe in its continuity, any fracture in perception no matter how small, will create an increasingly chaotic redistribution effect.

The top 1% of America pays 40% of the federal income taxes. Getting rid of the rich is probably a pretty bad idea for the rest of us.

[deleted]

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#64

Post by [deleted] »

Rooster61 wrote: post #45
socalgal2 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's a very naive, but common, viewpoint of wealth. "Worth" 1.3 billion does not mean "has 1.3 billion lying around in liquid cash". Net worth is tied up usually in many bank accounts across multiple banks, securities, real estate, trusts, etc. And that's all excluding capital tied up in corporations/orgs. Freeing up and giving away half of a billion dollar net worth is a difficult and time consuming thing, one whi…

[deleted]

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#66

Post by jedberg »

Jblx2 wrote: post #29

I wonder what the infrastructure is like for craigslist.

My experience is a few decades old but it was pretty simple. Some servers for the text and some for the images. The data is super cacheable, the hot set is really hot (current listings), and storing text and some image pointers is pretty simple for even a moderate database (which can be split by metro).

I was on the security team for eBay/PayPal at the time they took a minority stake in Craigslist, and one of the jobs we got was securing their infrastructure (they didn't have a security team).

I wonder if they still have that arrangement with eBay...

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#67

Post by Rooster61 »

tripleee wrote: post #50
Rooster61 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very naive, but common, viewpoint of wealth. "Worth" 1.3 billion does not mean "has 1.3 billion lying around in liquid cash". Net worth is tied up usually in many bank accounts across multiple banks, securities, real estate, trusts, etc. And that's all excluding capital tied up in corporations/orgs. Freeing up and giving away half of a billion dollar net worth is a difficult and time consuming thing, one whi…

I promise they can afford to hire someone to do the difficult and time consuming thing here.

They certainly can. And the list of people who have become rich only to have it siphoned away by bean counters is at least as long as the people who are still rich.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#68

Post by jeffbee »

criddell wrote: post #57
jeffbee wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Craigslist doesn't even charge for rental listings, do they? I thought they only charge for help wanted ads.

They charge for rental listings in some markets.

Interesting. I wonder why they feel it is not necessary or not profitable to do it in the Bay Area.

Re: The founder of Craigslist has given away half a billion dollars

#69

Post by Zigurd »

jeffbee wrote: post #40
socalgal2 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also one of the major things the destroyed newspapers. I'm not saying that's bad, just pointing out it happened.

[flagged]

Indeed, conflating local news with local newspapers is a mistake. They were able to support news gathering by monopolizing print advertising. They were also overly dependent on the municipal government and police for access, and were therefore often timid on certain subjects.
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