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San Francisco bans parking space apps

bbc.com

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Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#81

Post by lifeisstillgood »

naturalethic wrote: post #80
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #5

Well, duh ! They have an app that auctions the public parking space you are currently in - and you wait in it till the buyer arrives How did anyone expect that would remain ethical or legal? There are many ways technology could improve parking in SF but making private profits off public resources is not it.

Nature finds a way. The free market is the little green shoots growing up between the cracks of the grey statist utopian paved earth. Technology is allowing innovators to outpace the entitled dullards that inhabit the halls of political privilege. They'll shut this down, with all you fine citizens celebrating, but the innovators will route around it again.

People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do. That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices.

Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price)

We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward in a society packed full of other selfish Great Apes with weapons.

It works - we are living proof. It can always be improved, but almost always a market failure in the western world is down to some greedy bastard somewhere breaking the rules to obtain an advantage and not getting shutdown fast enough.

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#82

Post by gambiting »

danielweber wrote: post #75
gambiting wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the places made for,and maintained with public money though?

If the city owns a ballpark, and 50,000 people want to sit behind homeplate on opening day, you still need a mechanism for allocating those seats. You can lottery, but then people would just trade the seats for money themselves. Why bother? If you want poor people to have more money, give them more money. You can even do it randomly if the lottery aspect is fun for them.

Because if you think about it, you paid in your taxes to build and maintain a parking place, and now some asshole sits there all day, waiting for someone to pay him to move his car. Even if it is not illegal, it is unethical.

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#83

Post by gambiting »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #81
naturalethic wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature finds a way. The free market is the little green shoots growing up between the cracks of the grey statist utopian paved earth. Technology is allowing innovators to outpace the entitled dullards that inhabit the halls of political privilege. They'll shut this down, with all you fine citizens celebrating, but the innovators will route around it again.

People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do . That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices. Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price) We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward i…

airbnb makes money off private property and I cannot possibly see how renting your own house to someone would be called stealing. This app makes money of public property, and that is where the difference is - it's as if you were auctioning off your place in a homeless shelter, if you want to stick to the AirBnB reference.

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#84

Post by gambiting »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #68
Nursie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> You seem to think that paying for something is somehow inherently immoral, while being lucky and finding it first is virtuous and good. May I ask why? Of course I don't. Do go ahead and enjoy knocking your straw man though. I just don't think that applying market principles to parts of what little is left of 'the commons' is an equitable solution, as it prices poorer people out of facilities.

If your concern is for poor people being priced out of the market, the best solution is (obviously) not to destroy the market, but to subsidize poor people. Proper pricing of parking would bring in significant revenues, some of them could be directed to pay for poor people's parking.

I disagree with this statement a lot. I will give you an example, based on trains. In the country where I come from, Poland, trains lines are owned by the government, which makes them incredibly cheap. I know a lot of people who commute long distances to work or study,because the ticket for a 2 hour long journey costs an equivalent of $2-3 USD.

However, now I live in the UK, and despite the standard of living being much higher, and people making a lot more money in general, I know very few people who regularly take trains to go anywhere, because prices are "as high as the market will bear",which makes commuting longer distances very expensive - due to the fact that all train lines are private and they charge whatever they see fit, with higher prices during rush hours, and so on.

And no, the solution is not to subsidize poor people. In fact, I would not describe myself poor, making $30k a year, and I still would not take a train every day, as it would be ruining financially. In Poland, even if I was making a third of what I make here I could afford to commute by train every day, as it is absurdly cheap.

I feel like the same thing applies here. Cheap, publicly owned parking spaces guarantee better opportunities for everyone, and that's how it should be like.

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#85

Post by danielweber »

gambiting wrote: post #82
danielweber wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the city owns a ballpark, and 50,000 people want to sit behind homeplate on opening day, you still need a mechanism for allocating those seats. You can lottery, but then people would just trade the seats for money themselves. Why bother? If you want poor people to have more money, give them more money. You can even do it randomly if the lottery aspect is fun for them.

Because if you think about it, you paid in your taxes to build and maintain a parking place, and now some asshole sits there all day, waiting for someone to pay him to move his car. Even if it is not illegal, it is unethical.

This doesn't seem to be a response to me. I think it's good for the government to put a stop to this racket (which is the term for creating a problem and then offering to receive money to stop it).

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#86

Post by lifeisstillgood »

gambiting wrote: post #83
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do . That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices. Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price) We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward i…

airbnb makes money off private property and I cannot possibly see how renting your own house to someone would be called stealing. This app makes money of public property, and that is where the difference is - it's as if you were auctioning off your place in a homeless shelter, if you want to stick to the AirBnB reference.

A "large proportion" of airbnb is sub-letting - either a flat for a week while away, a room for months or other types banned in the original lease contract. Even some people who own their own leasehold in the uk don't have rental rights.

The BBC estimated that was 40% of rentals on airbnb - it is my contention that airbnb is doing a YouTube - basing its growth on breaches of copyright / lease law whilst hoping to grow big enough fast enough for it to not matter.

I think a better analogy is ticket touting - you buy a ticket at the baseball game and then sell the seat again, leaving when the next buyer turns up. And you only buy at "public good" rates and sell at "market rates"

This app would also go out of business if SF city sold parking places at market rates - there would be no margin.

In all, it's a silly app trying to create an after market in something where they and their customers have no legal rights and no practical enforcement, and I think they were hoping to scrape enough and not get noticed.

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#87

Post by SilasX »

minimax wrote: post #13

The problem with this business is not that it forces people to pay high prices for high value parking spaces, rather it's that it incentivizes people to camp out in high value spaces, and that the revenue accrues to the campers and not to the city. If this app is popular at all, it's probably an indication that the city isn't charging enough for parking.

This is deifferent from land speculation ... how?

Re: San Francisco bans parking space apps

#88

Post by scott_s »

jtc331 wrote: post #53
valdiorn wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parking is a service, provided by the city. The people who pay taxes have already paid for that parking spot. If you, or somebody else (Even the city!) try to profiteer in excess of that, it's predatory and against the rules. If this was in a private parking lot; knock yourself out. Charge whatever you want. Charge a hundred dollars a minute. But it's public space, and you cannot hold public property hostage and expe…

>> "You would be no better than a group of highwaymen holding up a bridge" That situation isn't analogous. If you'd paid via parking meter for a space, then reselling it is merely simple arbitrage. You've already paid for the right to use that spot.

But you have not paid for the right to sell that spot.
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