Stop The JerkTech • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#101

Post by silencio » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:05 AM UTC

icambron wrote: post #84

I dislike all of these companies, but I'd have put it all differently: The first one, Reservation Hop, is simply indefensible because it relies on fraud. It's deceiving restaurants into thinking the person asking for a reservation is a real person. Not only does it involve lying, but it's fundamentally different from scalping a ticket because if no one "buys" the reservation, the restaurant gets nothing and was perha…

> inefficiently priced parking

This is not really relevant in the context of San Francisco. The city has been running a pilot program since 2010 to change meter pricing based on demand. Interested startups could have worked within this program and with SFMTA to help. All Monkey Parking et al. have been doing is screwing with this program which has been actively adjusting prices and rolling out to more areas.

http://sfpark.org/how-it-works/pricing/

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#102

Post by grey-area » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:05 AM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #7

God 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 startu…

Startups like this don't create value.

This is a very old hypothesis, and you are shadowing Marx in decrying parasitic middlemen. Value is such a indeterminate notion that anyone could be said to be creating it, but so many activities we take for granted (and which render us service) are parasitic in some sense - taking rent, opening a store of any kind, transporting goods, paying interest, manufacturing goods are all based on taking advantage of a gap between buyer/seller or taking advantage of an inherent advantage of scale/capital (ownership of the means of production if you like). I think it's ok not to add any value other than getting a service/product to someone who wants it and doesn't want to spend energy looking for it. That's not what makes these companies regrettable.

Google can earn $60 billion in revenue per year because they create even more value than that for its users and customers.

Google is, strictly speaking, a middleman just like the companies above, it doesn't create significant value for end users with advertising (its primary source of revenue), that might even be a negative for customers. Google lives in the interstices between customers/customer data and advertisers and the value they create is mostly incidental to their main revenue stream (it is in services like gmail, gmaps, android etc), and designed carefully to ring-fence customers or guide them toward being the end product of advertising streams. Again, I don't think that's bad, but it's important to recognise that and its similarity to the activities of these other companies or others like Amazon or Apple which provide useful services at the same time as making money as middlemen. They could easily earn $60 billion a year by being evil, and we might not even notice if they were at first because we're too busy enjoying the nice free presents.

The problem with the companies in this article I think, and any other company gone bad, is that the interests of consumer and customer become misaligned to such an extent that the company no longer serves its customers in the sense of seeing to their needs, but in the sense of serving them up to others.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#103

Post by untog » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:16 AM UTC

NhanH wrote: post #29

wpietri wrote: post #7

God 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 startu…

Just to be clear: I agree with your point on focusing on creating value. And after I read your comment, I agree that none of the startups in the articles are truly creating that much value. However, is it that simple to qualify when you're creating value? If I had read the article before HN's comments, I'd have thought the startup is cool (admittedly trivial and silly, but we have a lot of those nowadays), rather tha…

Yes, while it would shift the value to rich people, it also free up the rich people's time, so they (rich people) can create more value.

Have trickle down economics ever been proven to actually work?

Either way, my problem is this: millionaires don't care about running one-off, unique restaurants. They'd want to set up a chain, or something similarly profitable. So if we go with this "redirecting money to rich people" idea, all the restaurants that struggle to get by close and get replaced with McDonalds. Great.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#104

Post by jgh » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:18 AM UTC

icambron wrote: post #96

jgh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parking ones won't last long if cities follow Santa Monica's lead: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/05/smart-parking-... edit: tl;dr the extra time gets wiped out when your car leaves the spot.

As I understand it, the issue isn't the leftover meter money at all; it's just access to the spot . There are no meters (or there's a meter and it's trivially cheap) but there's a chronic shortage of parking spaces. So by occupying one, you claim it. That opens up the market for buying and selling spots, where the only good changing hands is the "right" to put a vehicle in a particular box of space.

Fair enough, I considered that after I left the comment and you're probably right, access to the space is probably more valuable than what's left on the meter.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#105

Post by silencio » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:24 AM UTC

zevyoura wrote: post #11

vellum wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could also use sensors that detect when a parking spot is free, and upload that information to an app or the web.

They're actually doing both of those things, though not on a spot-by-spot basis: http://sfpark.org/

Actually, they used to do it on a spot-by-spot basis to generate info about demand to change pricing, as the prices are often different depending on which block you park on (!). My original reason for using the sfpark iPhone app was that it could tell you where to go for the nearest currently-open street parking spot. They even had a publicly available data feed for this for other app developers to use: http://sfpark.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/SFpark-parking-...

Unfortunately they stopped providing sensor data about half a year ago with the end of the pilot program. But the sensors are still physically around, and SFMTA (hopefully) are looking into improving sensor technology to upgrade, and seeing if it makes sense to release this data again.

Personally between that availability info and that SFMTA has not been afraid to tinker with pricing changes - definitely a big FU to Monkey Parking et al. Not sure why they didn't work with private lots and home garages or something instead - that would make a lot more sense than messing with something that's already in the works.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#106

Post by icambron » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:32 AM UTC

silencio wrote: post #101

icambron wrote: post #84

I dislike all of these companies, but I'd have put it all differently: The first one, Reservation Hop, is simply indefensible because it relies on fraud. It's deceiving restaurants into thinking the person asking for a reservation is a real person. Not only does it involve lying, but it's fundamentally different from scalping a ticket because if no one "buys" the reservation, the restaurant gets nothing and was perha…

> inefficiently priced parking This is not really relevant in the context of San Francisco. The city has been running a pilot program since 2010 to change meter pricing based on demand. Interested startups could have worked within this program and with SFMTA to help. All Monkey Parking et al. have been doing is screwing with this program which has been actively adjusting prices and rolling out to more areas. http://s…

I'll admit it's been a few years since I parked in SF. But I guess I don't understand how that program could be working but still give these guys a market. If the meters are setting the prices at market-clearing levels, then it would be prohibitively expensive to hold onto a spot you didn't need, and there'd be an equally priced spot available nearby anyway. I don't know if it's that the pricing doesn't work that well or the program isn't in enough areas yet or what, but it definitely sounds like the kind of solution that should squash these guys' business. I hope it does.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#107

Post by enraged_camel » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:34 AM UTC

icambron wrote: post #84

I dislike all of these companies, but I'd have put it all differently: The first one, Reservation Hop, is simply indefensible because it relies on fraud. It's deceiving restaurants into thinking the person asking for a reservation is a real person. Not only does it involve lying, but it's fundamentally different from scalping a ticket because if no one "buys" the reservation, the restaurant gets nothing and was perha…

>>The parking ones are a bit different, in that they're taking advantage of inefficiently priced parking.

The reason parking is priced the way it is is because it is a public good. The only thing "efficient" pricing would do is give wealthy people a massive advantage over the consumption of that good. You might like to live in a world where only rich people can afford public parking - I don't.

That's exactly why the SF government is taking an issue with these startups: they skew the game in favor of those who have money. For the usage of private property, such as houses, this may not be a huge deal. But public parking by definition belongs to the public: everyone should have an equal chance at consuming it. Fairness trumps inefficiency.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#108

Post by endgovernment » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:35 AM UTC

crapshoot101 wrote: post #21

nness wrote: post #2

I 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.

Not really - the tragedy of the commons is the examples of oceans fisheries or trash on the street, where any one person doesn't have enough ownership to care enough to ensure continual sustainability. Ironically, this is if anything, a counter to the tragedy of the commons (albeit an awkward fit) - they're trying to price something that has an assumed value people took for granted. Again, I'm not saying its somethin…

No, unpriced public parking is a GREAT example of a tragedy of the commons situation. Un-owned property is used inefficiently. This is a fundamental economic principle.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#109

Post by enraged_camel » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:40 AM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #59

profquail wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Because nearly every internet business gets it's revenue from advertising" Citation please? There are many "internet businesses" that don't derive their revenue from advertising, e.g., AWS, Dropbox, Netflix. Spotify derives some revenue from advertising, but their core business is subscriptions. ad nauseum

Count all of the web content you've consumed and all the web services you've used in the past year. Now count all the ones you've paid for. Also, those paid-for services you mention are of such high quality (to you, not advertisers) because you pay for them. You are the customer not the product, as they say.

You're right, and it's depressing that you're being downvoted. Then again, HN can be a very hostile place if you bring an unpopular perspective to a discussion, even if that perspective is presented with clarity of thought and reason.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#110

Post by 7Figures2Commas » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 5:42 AM UTC

grey-area wrote: post #102

wpietri wrote: post #7

God 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 startu…

Startups like this don't create value. This is a very old hypothesis, and you are shadowing Marx in decrying parasitic middlemen. Value is such a indeterminate notion that anyone could be said to be creating it, but so many activities we take for granted (and which render us service) are parasitic in some sense - taking rent, opening a store of any kind, transporting goods, paying interest, manufacturing goods are al…

This isn't an issue of middlemen, value or the alignment of interests between customer and company. It's an issue of legality.

Google operates a legal business. It sells advertising on a service that it owns. Period.

The parking companies in the article are knowingly inducing their "customers" to violate local laws that forbid the buying and selling of on-street public parking. These companies seek to profit from this and as a result are now in legal hot water themselves. As for ReservationHop, I believe restaurants may have legal recourse. California's unfair competition laws are fairly broad and I think an argument could be made that intentionally booking fake reservations for the purpose of advertising and reselling them would constitute an unfair and perhaps even fraudulent business practice.