Stop The JerkTech • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#151

Post by neilk » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 10:10 AM UTC

neurobro wrote: post #149

There is certainly a high level of jerkiness in making fake reservations, but I think it's overblown in the article. If a restaurant is exclusive and popular enough to require reservations, and people are willing to pay $5-10 for a reservation, why don't they just charge $5-10 for reservations themselves, or require a small membership fee to make reservations, or start rejecting customers who can't prove they are the…

I don't understand your logic. Just because countermeasures could exist, it doesn't mean that the original offenders aren't so bad. Nor does that place any new responsibilities on the restaurant, to piss off their customers who by now might have been going to the same restaurants for decades, with the informal system.

Furthermore, an ID check isn't as painless and easy to implement as you say. Often, other guests arrive before the person who made the reservation. Public figures make reservations under assumed names. And the name on someone's ID may not match the name they typically use (read patio11's brilliant piece http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...).

And then there's just the offensiveness of requiring people to carry ID in the first place.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#152

Post by lmm » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 10:12 AM UTC

neumann wrote: post #43

rahimnathwani wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalpers do create value. After a complete scalping transaction: - the original ticket purchaser is happier with the cash received than with the ticket they had before - the final ticket purchaser is happier with the ticket than with the cash they paid - the scalper is happy with his/her profit - the promoter's/venue's revenue is unaffected So, three people are better off. Value has been created.

I do not understand this logic. What original ticket purchaser? Scalpers aren't like eBay. They have bought up the tickets from the venue at certain amount, depriving others of a limited resource at that same value, and now offering it a higher value to people who didn't have the means to buy it as fast as the scalper. The disruption the scalper is introducing into an existing system benefits nobody but themselves.

Yesterday I bought a ticket at >2x face value for a concert on Monday. That's value for me - I'd like to be able to go to things without having to plan my life months in advance, and I'm willing to pay for the privilege.

Supply isn't set in stone. If scalpers buy up tickets early on then they take on the risk that a show won't sell out, and that allows the promoters to move to a bigger venue (as happened in this case), add more nights, or even raise prices. So the promoter benefits too.

It's no different from any other middleman: find someone who's selling at price x, find someone who's buying at y > x, connect them together and take your cut. Which is what makes capitalism works.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#153

Post by grey-area » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 10:27 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #124

grey-area wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> it doesn't create significant value for end users with advertising It doesn't? Google ads fund YouTube, Gmail, Docs, Chrome, Android, and lots of other hit Google services that are Google produced products/content, not a middle-man service between content producer and advertiser.

it doesn't create significant value for end users with advertising

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#154

Post by walshemj » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 10:45 AM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #130

marcus_holmes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic theory. A rich person earns more money per hour than a poor person (by definition). Money is a representation of value (by definition). In Economics, value earned is at least proportional (if not equal) to value created. So a rich person creates more value in the same amount of time than a poor person. Their time is literally more valuable. In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In prac…

A rich person usually inherits more money. Abolish inheritance and almost all of the capitalistic problems disappear.

along with vast swathes of the middle class

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#155

Post by marcus_holmes » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 10:51 AM UTC

bildung wrote: post #125

marcus_holmes wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic theory. A rich person earns more money per hour than a poor person (by definition). Money is a representation of value (by definition). In Economics, value earned is at least proportional (if not equal) to value created. So a rich person creates more value in the same amount of time than a poor person. Their time is literally more valuable. In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. In prac…

Economic theory. A rich person earns more money per hour than a poor person (by definition). Money is a representation of value (by definition). In Economics, value earned is at least proportional (if not equal) to value created. So a rich person creates more value in the same amount of time than a poor person. Their time is literally more valuable. The assumption of a rich person being rich because of the value crea…

Actually it doesn't matter how they became rich. A rich person creates value by investing their wealth in economic activity, which generates interest as a payment back to them "earned" by their investment.

If our example rich person does absolutely nothing except put their money in a bank, and yet earns more per hour in interest payments than our poor person, that rich person is still creating more value in the same amount of time.

Like I said, this is just the theory. One reason why we should never allow ourselves to be governed by economists ;)

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#156

Post by CaptainZapp » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 10:53 AM UTC

silencio wrote: post #132

Patrick_Devine wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. Hats off to the city as SFPark is absolutely brilliant. Are people actually using these "jerkTech" services though? If you've got the SFPark app, why would you bother with Monkey Parking? I get the feeling that they're all enjoying the free hype/hate which is being doled out right now as it's probably steering more users their way. Ultimately though there is no way any of these services will be viab…

SFPark's most useful feature - the per-spot sensors - was disabled last year ... Kind of a shame, that would have eaten Monkey Parking's lunch, I think. Not sure if people really used it or if people use Monkey Parking at all, but the hate doesn't really help the image problem that tech already has in SF. > It's a similar thing for making restaurant reservations. If restaurants start getting hit with a ton of no show…

I'm not a restaurant owner, but very much feel your rage (you don't have to be in a business to violently detest parasitic douche bags).

Here's an idea, slightly based on Alinea's ticket system:

Charge a relatively low deposit. Say if I make a reservation you charge my credit card with 20$ (or whatever). If I cancel (it does happen) up to three hours (or 6, or 24, or whatever) in advance the charge is reversed and the transaction is at no cost to me.

If I show up the 20$ are fully credited and deducted from the bill.

This would certainly only work for restaurants that can generate the necessary demand. Then again those are also the victims of those DoucheScalpers.

As a patron I really wouldn't mind guaranteeing my reservation with a small, up front payment. Especially when I can cancel within a reasonable time frame, no hassle and get fully refunded.

On a off topic side note: I actually cancel reservations if I don't need them. It seems to me just common courtesy and the right thing to do. It may enable somebody else to use the table and I strongly suspect that it doesn't hurt my karma with the restaurant for next time I want to book a table.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#157

Post by walshemj » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 11:05 AM UTC

bunkat wrote: post #5

Whenever 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…

Restaurants are not exactly Lilly white they have huge mark-ups of drink and food, deserts especially.

They also take advantage by paying staff less the minimum wage and relying on tips to make a living - a campaign for a living wage for restaurant workers would be a better use of "josh" and those like him time.

If foxcon treated their staff in the way the average restaurants did there would be an outcry

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#158

Post by walshemj » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 11:12 AM UTC

aiiane wrote: post #24

wpietri wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's great that people want to solve problems, but this isn't actually solving the problem. It's shifting the problem from rich people to poor people. In contrast, there are plenty of startups that are actually making the parking problem better. City CarShare and ZipCar are reducing the number of cars in the city by having cars available on demand. GetAround and RelayRides are upping the number of drivers per…

Yeah. The real solution to parking in SF is to have fewer people driving, which would involve improving the public transit options.

Always struck me as off is SF that has a trolly buss system why they didn't extend that with trams for longer distance commutes.

Or did NIBY residents stop any such developments.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#159

Post by Nursie » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 11:18 AM UTC

jbackus wrote: post #67

> Don’t concert ticket re-sale sites like StubHub encourage and take a cut from scalping? Yes, and I’m not a big fan of them for that reason. If the demand for a band’s ticket is high, they’re the ones that should be making the mark-up, not some sleazy guy with 20 computers who bought 40 tickets the second they went on sale to turn around and flip them. But at least that guy has to bet his own money that he can resel…

Some venues and some acts think this behaviour is scummy too, and go to great lengths to stamp it out.

It's pretty antisocial to snap up as many tickets as possible and then relist them at double the price within seconds. If you can't go, fine, but if you're just profiteering then you're inserting yourself into a transaction where you're not wanted.

It's the shows that sell out in seconds that these guys try to get in on, so there's no risk to the venue or the act anyway, scalpers are just basically extortionists at that point.

Re: Stop The JerkTech

#160

Post by neurobro » Fri, Jul 04, 2014, 11:42 AM UTC

neilk wrote: post #151

neurobro wrote: post #149

There is certainly a high level of jerkiness in making fake reservations, but I think it's overblown in the article. If a restaurant is exclusive and popular enough to require reservations, and people are willing to pay $5-10 for a reservation, why don't they just charge $5-10 for reservations themselves, or require a small membership fee to make reservations, or start rejecting customers who can't prove they are the…

I don't understand your logic. Just because countermeasures could exist, it doesn't mean that the original offenders aren't so bad. Nor does that place any new responsibilities on the restaurant, to piss off their customers who by now might have been going to the same restaurants for decades, with the informal system. Furthermore, an ID check isn't as painless and easy to implement as you say. Often, other guests arr…

I'm not saying the app is less bad because countermeasures exist, only that the app is not as bad as the article makes it out to be, and countermeasures exist. Restaurants constantly have to adapt to changing conditions, which is how they end up with reservation policies in the first place.

The point of the ID suggestion (which was only one idea) would be to somehow identify users of the app, let them travel all the way to the restaurant with their date or client, and reject their reservation. This will kill the app faster than begging the developer to be less of a jerk.