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Magic

getmagicnow.com

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Re: Magic

#541

Post by avn2109 »

GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #488
saraid216 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His reason is almost certainly money. An agent's commission isn't insignificant. It's the opportunity cost of, well... what he's doing. If he's talking with contractors, he's probably also trying to figure out how to fix it up or modify it. I didn't need to talk with any contractors at all, so I don't know whether or not an agent would have helped.

When we bought our house, the seller paid for our agent as well as theirs.

If the seller is paying for "your" agent, is she really yours in the incentivized sense?

eg. Zuckerberg's college buddy who fronted the money for early FB servers was sure that "his" attorneys had his back, right up until they stabbed him, because they were paid by Zuckerberg.

Re: Magic

#542

Post by zachweisman »

dsuth wrote: post #462
Anderkent wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any such service would immediately be outcompeted by one which doesn't provide all that - it's trivial to clone an on-demand service, and if you have lower costs you can be cheaper. If you want all that, you should move to a country where all that is required by law, or lobby towards these laws being implemented in your country. However, you must realise that all that has very real costs; and businesses that are only…

> Any such service would immediately be outcompeted by one which doesn't provide all that - it's trivial to clone an on-demand service, and if you have lower costs you can be cheaper. In other words, it's the classic 'race to the bottom' problem, which is exactly what the OP is talking about. It's not helpful at a societal level to out-compete each other into the ground. I don't agree that companies should become saf…

It is good to compete until prices drops super low.... technology drives efficiency and offers better stuff at greater quality tities for lower prices. It's not actually helpful to overpay for things just to ensure a living wage. This living wage is at a lower standard of living. You don't build a building with a thousand men with shovels because someone else will build one nearby using bulldozers. Consumers would rather preserve their own hard earned money than overpay in order to grant someone else a higher than necessary wage.

Re: Magic

#544

Post by dsuth »

zachweisman wrote: post #542
dsuth wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any such service would immediately be outcompeted by one which doesn't provide all that - it's trivial to clone an on-demand service, and if you have lower costs you can be cheaper. In other words, it's the classic 'race to the bottom' problem, which is exactly what the OP is talking about. It's not helpful at a societal level to out-compete each other into the ground. I don't agree that companies should become saf…

It is good to compete until prices drops super low.... technology drives efficiency and offers better stuff at greater quality tities for lower prices. It's not actually helpful to overpay for things just to ensure a living wage. This living wage is at a lower standard of living. You don't build a building with a thousand men with shovels because someone else will build one nearby using bulldozers. Consumers would ra…

That's all well and good from the consumers point of view. It doesn't help people who are spending their working hours at a place that cannot support them. It's not about doing things less efficiently, so your 'building with shovels' example is facile. The point is that companies alone cannot be entrusted with the welfare of their employees - this is why minimum wage and works rights / entitlements exist in the first place. The concern is that these companies are using loopholes to skirt the laws, to the detriment of citizens.

I'm sure you'd agree that citizens rights should trump those of consumers who want cheap stuff.

Re: Magic

#545

Post by INTPenis »

roel_v wrote: post #378
INTPenis wrote: post #377

Is this really new in the states? In sweden we've had these numbers called 118 100, or 118 118 where it costs relatively much to call in but they can take care of a lot of things for you. For example since my company pays for my phone I tend to use them for things like getting a taxi wherever I am. "I want a taxi in X city". And they can do this via SMS or phone call, they can send the reply via phone or via sms if y…

Do they handle payment? When I lived in Belgium there were a few services like what you describe (2000-2001 ish), but they were all basically glorified Yellow Pages - they'd find and call a service provider for you, but from there on out you were on your own. Also don't bother sending them a list like '6 eggs, a gallon of milk and a pair of black socks', which it seems this service does cater for.

No you can't make purchases through them, and you can't store information with them.

The only type of payment involved is the service fee when you call the number. Other than that they look up information for you, or answer questions for you. Like a google phone operator.

Re: Magic

#546

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

avn2109 wrote: post #541
GFK_of_xmaspast wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we bought our house, the seller paid for our agent as well as theirs.

If the seller is paying for "your" agent, is she really yours in the incentivized sense? eg. Zuckerberg's college buddy who fronted the money for early FB servers was sure that "his" attorneys had his back, right up until they stabbed him, because they were paid by Zuckerberg.

Being little people, the laws apply to us.

Re: Magic

#547

Post by dlwj »

Anderkent wrote: post #453
gosmart4u wrote: post #446

I discovered this through a Facebook thread that has a ton of comments on it from non HN or techie peeps. Thought you might want to know what normal non-techies think. "I think it is a great idea that has potential but I personally wouldn't use them because I can't find anything about them on the website. Looks like a scam." "They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 m…

>"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy." ... What. This just doesn't compute. In what mindframe does this ever make sense as a complaint? If you're creating new jobs, even if they're low wage, you're just giving people more choice - they can now work at one more place than before, no one's forced into that, it literally can't do harm. And direct transfer of we…

Justified inequality is good as long as it filters out high quality from low quality. The genius should be compensated more than the low-life.

Systems that classify human potential at birth though are rather unfair and amount to nepotism. The opposite of objective quality. No matter how many jobs a King or Queen creates, the upper class is always above the lower class.

Also, absolute transfer of wealth doesn't mean relative transfer. Slavery nowadays is actually more expensive then just hiring illegals because of housing and food costs. Wealth here is transferred in an absolute sense.

That said, many Uber drivers are very happy with the steeping stone it lends them. Flexible hours, and rather decent pay.

Re: Magic

#548

Post by Kafoury »

ej_campbell wrote: post #543
Kafoury wrote: post #206

Perhaps the site's creators will be kind enough to consider the privacy issues regarding Google Fonts: http://fontfeed.com/archives/google-webfonts-the-spy-inside/

Google addresses this here: https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#Privacy

From your link: "We do log records of the CSS and the font file requests". I don't trust Google and that's final.

Re: Magic

#549

Post by GFischer »

_ZeD_ wrote: post #248

uhhm... in italy we have this kind of service for years (I remember back in the '80s when there was still one national telephonic company there was this number "12" you could call to have infos). There is now a profusion of heritage (like http://www.1240.it , http://www.892424.it , etc).

But they got complacent and didn't scale, I guess they missed the boat.

Re: Magic

#550

Post by xasos »

Anderkent wrote: post #453
gosmart4u wrote: post #446

I discovered this through a Facebook thread that has a ton of comments on it from non HN or techie peeps. Thought you might want to know what normal non-techies think. "I think it is a great idea that has potential but I personally wouldn't use them because I can't find anything about them on the website. Looks like a scam." "They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 m…

>"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy." ... What. This just doesn't compute. In what mindframe does this ever make sense as a complaint? If you're creating new jobs, even if they're low wage, you're just giving people more choice - they can now work at one more place than before, no one's forced into that, it literally can't do harm. And direct transfer of we…

I think it's inherent that every economy needs a number of "lower-tier" employment opportunities for the "upper-tier" to exist and function well. And until robotization becomes viable and accepted, this will continue to be the case.
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