Stop The JerkTech
techcrunch.com
Stop The JerkTech
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Re: Stop The JerkTech
#2I wonder if this is conceptually similar to "Tragedy of The Commons." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)
I can't really see how these services are not just the exploitation of services for the public good. Pretty disgusting behaviour.
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#3That's one reason I use unexploitable public goods, like public tranportion, and go to salad bars not trendy enough for some kid to want to scalp.
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#4> Thankfully the city of San Francisco is fighting Sweetch and Monkey Parking with cease-and-desist orders.
The city of San Francisco should be fighting Sweetch and Monkey Parking by cutting out the middleman and drastically raising their parking fees.
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#5Whenever I hear about these I always wonder what the people that found them are thinking. I mean, what type of person would you have to be to decide to try and screw over the restaurant industry (which already has historically low margins) just to make a buck? I can't even imagine how many fake reservations they would need to create to make that idea worthwhile for them. And what investors would give them money to do so?
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#6> Thankfully the city of San Francisco is fighting Sweetch and Monkey Parking with cease-and-desist orders. The city of San Francisco should be fighting Sweetch and Monkey Parking by cutting out the middleman and drastically raising their parking fees.
They could also use sensors that detect when a parking spot is free, and upload that information to an app or the web.
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#7God yes. The whole point of commerce is the creation and exchange of value. The great startups have been great because they create massive amounts of value in the world.
Startups like this don't create value. They just shift the value around. In the case of these startups, they shift the value to rich people while pocketing the cash. They are essentially parasitic.
Not only is that a dick move, it's dumb for a startup. Google can earn $60 billion in revenue per year because they create even more value than that for its users and customers. Startups that don't create much value have very limited opportunities for capturing value. As the parking app show, regulators are perfectly happy to ban things that don't create value, especially when they have obvious negative externalities. That's what happened to the entire telemarketing industry for example.
So please, people: focus on creating value, not just on whatever bullshit will bring a few dollars through the door.
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#8I completely agree with this article, but wonder if it's inevitable for someone to jump in and try to make profit off of services for the public good if there are people out there willing to pay for it.
For example, if we had sufficient parking in the city, these startups would never even cause a blip. Someone must have been driving around for half an hour looking for parking and then thought to themselves that, at that point, they would pay someone good money to just be able to find a spot - and suddenly the idea for a business was born...
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#9The reservation is obvious bullshit, but I just don't see a problem with selling your parking spot.
Re: Stop The JerkTech
#10Whenever I hear about these I always wonder what the people that found them are thinking. I mean, what type of person would you have to be to decide to try and screw over the restaurant industry (which already has historically low margins) just to make a buck? I can't even imagine how many fake reservations they would need to create to make that idea worthwhile for them. And what investors would give them money to do…
I mentor at startup events, so I know exactly what kind of people they are.
The good ones are people who just haven't thought it through. They've found some sort of demand, and they're doing the standard hack-the-system thing that the startup culture trains them to do. Once it's rolling, it's like Mencken said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
The bad ones are the sort of entitled douchebags that would have previously gone into investment banking or some other industry where the money's great and ethics aren't emphasized. But now startups are the high-status, high-money thing, so that's what they're after.