
Stop The JerkTech - minimaxir
http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/03/go-disrupt-yourself/
======
wpietri
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 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.

~~~
NhanH
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
than parasitic. I'd have thought it's just a clever hack in helping more
efficient distribution - in the true spirit of capitalism. 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. Assuming that rich people is richer
because society decides that their time is more valuable, they can create more
value in the same amount of times of some other poorer people.

Of course, that might be not morally justifiable. But creating value and being
morally correct is orthogonal.

I'm not living in SF the SV area, but I've a few friends there. Every time
they talked to me about startup ideas, I've always felt off about those ideas.
I kept telling myself that trivial value is still value, and potentially if it
can help many people, the net gain would still be large. How do I know where
to draw the line?

Edit: it seems like quite a few people have problem with my post, so let me
rephrase the middle paragraph a bit:

Ignoring the mentioning of rich/ poor, parking spot is a commodity. And just
like other commodity in life, everyone values it differently. What's wrong in
letting people paying for what they think it's worth for? The rich will always
have advantage in buying commodity, and that's a fundamental issue in our
society, but that's an entirely separate problem to fix, and the solution
isn't telling people to stop producing commodity, or distributing them. In
this specific case of parking lot, it's bad either way because a private
company is skimming profit from public space.

~~~
metaphorm
"Assuming that rich people is richer because society decides that their time
is more valuable, they can create more value in the same amount of times of
some other poorer people."

are you fucking kidding me? why would you assume that?

~~~
marcus_holmes
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 practice,
there is.

~~~
bildung
_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 created may
sound plausible, but is empirically falsified for at least the USA and
Germany. Statistically, a rich person is rich because she inherited.

~~~
smsm42
I don't know about Germany, but for USA it is does not appear to be true.
Which data your based your claim on?

Here: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/04/20/most-
wea...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/moneybuilder/2012/04/20/most-wealthy-
individuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth-2/) it says only 6% of wealthy
people are wealthy by inheritance.

Here: [http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/01/14/the-decline-of-
inheri...](http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/01/14/the-decline-of-inherited-
money/) they arrive at the same conclusion (minority got wealthy by
inheritance).

~~~
bildung
Sorry for the late reply, I didn't recognize your answer earlier. Is there
some comment notification option on hn that I missed?

The forbes article you quoted is a bit problematic because the data given are
voluntary answers. In studies like these there always is the problem of a
potentially skewed return rate: Given a return rate of 30%, what is the wealth
inheritance quota of the other 70%? My speculation would be that someone who
is proud of the fruit of his own hard work (the quoted local business owner)
is more likely to answer such a survey. On the other hand some rich person who
found a clever way to unofficially inherit parts of the own wealth while
avoiding the correlating taxes won't answer such a survey.

At least the second of the blogs.wsj.com studies is self-selected, too. I
couldn't find the papers for the two other quotes because the sources were too
vague.

It's better to use data sources like tax income of states. IMHO even better is
the concept of social mobility (the wikipedia article is quite good:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility)),
as it also encompasses factors like the parents' social contacts and
educational chances. The studies cited there all use official, non-self-
selected data and sometimes even proper longitudinal studies. In the results
presented there the USA has the the lowest intergenerational vertical social
mobility of all researched OECD countries (i.v.s.m. means the probability of a
child to get into a higher (or lower) class than its parents live in).

An example for Germany: The probability of a child of workers to get a degree
from a university is 17 times lower than that of a child with academic parents
(source: [http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/geschlossene-gesellschaft-
uber...](http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/geschlossene-gesellschaft-uber-die-
verteilung-von.media.09812bea2e59b93a7e5a15894f44b32d.pdf)).

Yes, social mobility is not the same as inherited wealth, because it's a
result of a combination of inheritance and other factors. On the plus side,
the empirical data it's based on is of comparibly high quality. The problem is
that monetary (as opposed to social etc.) wealth is pretty hard to measure
even given government data. In Germany for example the data for people having
income is more or less 100% available. But the richer you are, the less
probable it is for you to have income: The money then comes from capital
gains, rent etc. These are way harder to measure, e.g. the capital gains could
get collected by a corporation and not an individual. The corporations money
only gets tapped on demand (=saved inside the corporation hull until
retirement). And the child of the owner has a counsulting contract with that
company. Legally, thats not inheritance at all, but practically it pretty much
is.

------
bunkat
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 so?

~~~
wpietri
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.

~~~
eevilspock
_" It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it."_

Because nearly every internet business gets it's revenue from advertising, a
lot of good people jump through hoops to convince themselves that they have
not made a deal with the devil. The downvotes[1] come fast when I point out
this moral and cognitive dissonance, usually without any counter argument
since they just want me to go away.

When I talk to anyone who's livelihood doesn't rely on advertising or
marketing, there is near unanimous agreement that advertising is fundamentally
manipulative and dishonest.

Besides the social cost of Advertising, there many other costs[2]. The idea
that advertising gives us free web content and services is utter bullshit.

-

[1] The cowardly downvotes with no counter argument have already started.
Upton Sinclair is the actual source of the quote at the top. A wise man who
got a bunch of downvotes in his time.

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7767811](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7767811)

~~~
EdwardDiego
> When I talk to anyone who's livelihood doesn't rely on advertising or
> marketing, there is near unanimous agreement that advertising is
> fundamentally manipulative and dishonest. Besides the social cost of
> Advertising, there many other costs.

Such as? Keen to hear. :)

Also, what would you propose in lieu of the current advertising supported
model that is dominant today?

~~~
wpietri
For me the biggest problem with it is the enormous waste of talent. If we
banned all advertising tomorrow, nothing particularly bad would happen. People
would still learn about products; companies would still gain and lose
customers. Indeed, that whole process might be more effective. But suddenly
the US would have $500 billion or so worth of labor and goods to devote to
some purpose that is actually productive.

Actual smart humans waste their entire lives doing something that adds zero
net value the system. When I think of my friends in advertising, it always
makes me a little sad. What good things could they have done with their lives?

------
tyoma
The restaurant issue I'm somewhat conflicted about -- I don't know enough
about the business so some of my thoughts maybe impossible for various
reasons. If people are willing to buy reservations, why not just charge more
for the food until there is no waiting list? Or just charge for reservations
(or at least those at preferred times) and keep the money for the restaurant?
Whats the inherent reason that reservations have to be free with no charge to
cancel?

As for parking, the sooner cities get rid of hidden car subsidies the better.
Artificially low priced street parking and building codes mandating garages
are some of the more insidious subsidies that make everyone pay for those who
drive. If the spots went for market rate, these apps wouldn't exist and the
extra money could be used to improve public transit.

~~~
fidotron
Right - what I get from the parking stuff is just how undervalued parking
actually is, and just how poorly cities deal with it.

The restaurant one is dodgy though. I could approve of a system where they've
paid the restaurant in order to sell on a reservation (so the restaurant gets
something even if there are no takers) but as it stands it's just a con.

~~~
wpietri
Parking isn't undervalued. People just pay in time, not money. Better to say
that it's inefficiently priced. Shoup's "The High Cost of Free Parking" is the
bible on that: [http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Updated-
Edition/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Parking-Updated-
Edition/dp/193236496X)

~~~
fidotron
It's totally undervalued. Ask the average person if they think the price of
parking is right and they'll probably claim it's outrageously high, when the
existence and apparently enough-to-be visible success of this app prove the
opposite is true.

~~~
wpietri
You're making the same mistake I pointed out above. Ask people how they feel
about getting a good parking spot and you'll clearly hear that they value it.
Or measure the amount of time they spend driving around looking; it's a clear
demonstration that they value parking.

They do, however, expect it to be free. It's not a normal market.

Note that the same is true about love and sex. Most people value those things
highly, but you won't discover that by looking at what they pay for it.

~~~
scott_karana
> Note that the same is true about love and sex. Most people value those
> things highly, but you won't discover that by looking at what they pay for
> it.

That's a great analogy in general, thanks!

------
randallsquared
People keep using the phrases "the rich" and "the wealthy" in connection with
this parking app (I heard this same phrasing on the NPR story about it last
night), as though having a smartphone in the US and using it for parking is a
sign of wealth.

Firstly, a Virgin Mobile (no contract) Android phone is $30. Gas is well over
$3 a gallon near SF. If you can afford to drive a car (even assuming it was
_given_ to you and you therefore have no payments), you can definitely afford
a smartphone.

Secondly, the company rep was quoted as saying that the highest price ever
paid for a spot was $15. Is this is steep price to pay for a couple hours
parking? Sure. Is it only for the wealthy? No, I'm thinking not.

The reservation thing is much more of a "jerktech" startup because of the
potential harm to the restaurant[1], but the parking startup seems like a win,
all considered: people who care more can purchase certainty, and people who
don't care as much couldn't be certain of getting a parking spot even before
this, so...

[1] though they could just require showing photo ID in the reserved name to
effectively combat this, at least for a while.

~~~
clay_to_n
I see your distinction between the two, and agree that the restaurant app
clearly hurts the restaurants. But the parking app hurts every other driver in
the city who doesn't take part. I really don't see how using auctions for
every parking space is better for the whole than keeping public parking what
it is now (public).

------
jbackus
> 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 resell a private commodity he bought.

This is a weird opinion. This kind of resale is common in markets where
producers would rather guarantee selling their entire product at a certain
price as opposed to risking overpricing. Same reason many farmers sell off
crops immediately to middlemen instead of trying to maximize price selling
directly. They aren't being exploited, they're hedging risk. I would imagine
that centralized ticket websites like StubHub also improve the venue's
distribution in this case. If venues don't like resellers, they can follow
Louis CK's actions[1].

[1] [http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/07/03/louis-c-k-sees-
ticket...](http://thenextweb.com/media/2012/07/03/louis-c-k-sees-ticket-
scalping-drop-over-96-by-switching-to-selling-tickets-himself/)

~~~
jasonlotito
The author isn't linking StubHub to these other startups, rather, they're
saying "at least that guy has to bet his own money that he can resell a
private commodity he bought."

~~~
jbackus
Yes, I'm glad he isn't dismissing them. I'm just saying that it isn't as
simple as returning profits to the producer.

------
ipsin
Drivers selling parking spaces in San Francisco are potentially open to fines
of $300 according to the city attorney.

It seems very _polite_ that they're going after sites like Monkey Parking
instead of simply reserving spots for $5 or $10 and then busting the sellers
at $300 a pop.

I suppose that in that case, Monkey Parking would just become a component in
an entirely different sort of ecology.

------
MBlume
> 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.

~~~
wpietri
They're doing some of that. But there's a problem with that: plenty of people
who live here can't afford a sudden major bump in living expenses. In the long
term, correct pricing is part of the solution. But in the short term, it'd be
unfortunate to solve the problem by screwing poorer people.

And anyway, this could be a temporary spike in demand. Once places like ZipCar
and Uber get ahold of self-driving cars, I expect there will be a big decrease
in car ownership.

~~~
MBlume
Politically impossible, but my blanket response to "how will this affect poor
people" arguments is "give them money"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

~~~
icpmacdo
This concept is basically becoming a meme.

~~~
mjmahone17
So is legalize weed.

------
ChristianMarks
That'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.

~~~
ChuckFrank
That in and of itself is a good reason for great public goods. They are, or
should be, by definition 'unexploitable'.

------
aosmith
Seems like reservation hop is engaging in deceptive practices. I bought
tablesniper.com ~5 years ago with the same idea but didn't proceed after
talking to attorneys.

------
nl
Just wait someone realizes that it costs less for a driverless, electric car
to sit in a traffic jam than a car park.

~~~
aaronwall
Then they can have a fleet of them which go into traffic at peak hours & allow
people to bid to have them removed from traffic. ;)

~~~
ivanca
"What is your business model?"

"Extortion"

"Well, it is a time-proven way of making money; and you may go to jail, so I
can see you are not afraid of risk... like a true entrepreneur!"

~~~
jordanthoms
MafiaJoy?

------
icambron
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 perhaps force to turn down
legit customers, whereas the scalper actually paid for the ticket (though it
may have been inefficiently priced, see below for more on that). It also
creates no-value-added intermediary in the process. It's just a dick move all
around. I do suspect that a trade group for the restaurants could get
Reservation Hop cease-and-desisted, but the general solution here is for
restaurants to take a credit card as part of the reservation process.

The parking ones are a bit different, in that they're taking advantage of
_inefficiently priced parking_. Ever notice how it's really hard to find a
spot on a street full of first-come-first-serve, inexpensive parking? It's for
the same reason there are long lines and empty gas pumps before a storm with
anti-gouging rules in effect, or in stories about the Soviet Union. You can
park there for long periods of time even though you may not have a pressing
need for the spot, whereas people who have such a need can't get one. Normally
we manage such supply and demand issues through prices, so if you need a spot
badly enough you might be willing to pay for it and one will be available
because most people aren't. [1] What happens almost inevitably when you have
an inefficiently distributed good is a secondary market or some sort of
cultural mos, both of which are usually ethically dubious. In Boston, people
"reserve" spots by putting cones or lawn chairs in "their" spots and expect
you to respect it less you get your car keyed, thus compounding the
inefficiency. There are places where you can pay for people to "hold" your
spot, and I've had someone try to sell me theirs once. These companies are
filling in exactly there, except with technology. To be clear, I think these
companies are pretty crummy. But my point is that they're the almost
inevitable consequence of a pretty terrible system for allocating resources.
I.e. if we want to fix this, the best way to do it is to fix the underlying
problem rather than shaming businesses like this. EDIT: to be clear, I'm not
against shaming them if it makes you feel good; I just think it's not _the
solution to the problem_.

Even though that description overlaps in places with the article, I like my
framing a lot better. The article is coming from this place where
entrepreneurs are expected to be these angels descended to Earth to fix all
the "common man's" problem through innovation. Then we immolate ourselves
because the community/scene turns out to be full of non-special people who are
sometimes kinda shady and take advantage of bad policy and lax enforcement to
make money, just like people in all other walks of life. (In an age where so
much relies on technology, I don't even think it's reasonable to think of
"startup tech stuff" as a scene or a space or a community at all.) Maybe it's
fun to wring your hands about it and I can see a publication like TC likes to
see things through that lens, but I don't think it's a very helpful way of
approaching these problems if your real goal is to solve them.

[1] An important question here, given the context, is doesn't this just help
the rich get parking at the expense of poor people? Well, yes, it kind of
does. On the other hand, if you can't find a spot, it doesn't help poor people
much, except insomuch as poor people may be willing to spend a longer time
trying to park (in which case, we're making them pay for it with their time,
which doesn't seem good either). But more importantly, if we want to make
things easier for poor people, we should give them money so that they can do
what they want with it (including parking!). That's way better than making
parking artificially cheap, because a) it's a lot more flexible from the poor
person's perspective and b) it distorts the allocation of resources way less.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>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.

~~~
jl6
I think the point re rich-vs-poor is that efficient pricing should be
decoupled from wealth redistribution initiatives. An inefficient allocation of
resources only has the _side-effect_ of kind-of sort-of assisting the poor.
The real solution is to efficiently allocate resources, and then separately
take action to correct economic injustice.

~~~
icambron
I wish I'd used those exact words in my clumsy footnote.

------
nness
I wonder if this is conceptually similar to "Tragedy of The Commons."
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.

~~~
crapshoot101
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 something great, but its not this concept.

~~~
endgovernment
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.

------
namocat
I 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...

~~~
wpietri
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 car. Uber and Lyft (and taxis and transit)
let you get somewhere without having to park at all. Parking Panda and Park
Circa are turning unused private parking spaces into publicly available
inventory. Even Amazon is helping: part of what makes happy to do without a
car is the fact that they will make almost anything I want show up in a couple
of days.

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

~~~
walshemj
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.

------
funkyy
It seems that the part of young generation is extremely demanding. So
demanding that they misunderstand "communal" with "my". I am part of
generation that is happy to destroy public property just because they can.
Generation that sells what is rightfully owned by all. Its sad that mentioned
startups are more like vultures rather than tigers.

Good that someone finally publicly named those companies.

~~~
icebraining
Oh, please. Every generation had people selling common goods. The "tragedy of
the commons" wasn't exactly coined last year.

The reason these companies are made of young people is because they're tech
startups.

------
neurobro
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 "Dick Jerkson" who made the
reservation, etc? (That last one would only need to be a temporary measure, as
most people are going to ditch the app after being turned away once or twice.)

~~~
neilk
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...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-
believe-about-names/)).

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

~~~
neurobro
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.

------
Mikeb85
The good news is that while markets can be irrational in the short run,
eventually things that create no value ARE weeded out.

And the restaurant industry for one, while very competitive, is also a fairly
tight-knit community (due to the rigours and stress involved in the business),
and word gets around fast. I'm sure cities will also crack down on auctioning
public parking spots, to the extent that it will be an unprofitable exercise.

------
Ihaveagreatapp
Early squatting on parking spots - like when a company is early to offer
people social networking or online video, and they can then charge people
endlessly based on their proprietary spot for activities that should remain
free - public domain video and human interaction? Yeah, the parking guys are
the only exploitative, piggybacking guys around on the web.

------
ynniv
Regulate or save your breath. Jerks don't care whether people think that
they're jerks or not.

------
oh_sigh
The reservation is obvious bullshit, but I just don't see a problem with
selling your parking spot.

~~~
ar7hur
The problem is it's not _your_ parking spot, but public property.

~~~
chatmasta
Possession is 9/10 of the law. ;)

EDIT: Probably down voted because of length, but I'm pointing out that this is
an opinion lots of people have, and there's a reason it exists as a truism. If
you pass a law against apps like this, how could you possibly enforce it? The
seller's car is already in the spot, and police can't get a real time
notification that he's using the app. By the time they realize what happened
(if ever) the spot has been sold.

~~~
aiiane
Hence why they go after the "racketeers" \- the one facilitating it in an
organized way.

~~~
wpietri
And of course you can subpoena the racketeers, follow the money trail, and
ticket both buyers and sellers. According to the city attorney, it's a $300
fine:
[http://www.sfcityattorney.org/index.aspx?page=599](http://www.sfcityattorney.org/index.aspx?page=599)

------
trysomething
Frankly there is no need to keep beating the drum about these startups. This
is at least the 4th article about the parking apps on HN's front page in the
last couple weeks. It's also been on TV.

This is not not _deeply interesting_ anymore, and as such I am flagging it. I
hope others will do the same.

------
gfodor
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the reservation thing, while
being a bit sketchy in that the guy uses a fake name, doesn't seem as
abhorrent as people seem to be making it out to be. If the guy was printing
money hand over fist like an evil villain that'd be one thing, but it sounds
like a weekend hack. An experiment. You know, the type of thing we encourage
here so as to learn something. He cancels the reservation if nobody buys it.
He's focusing on restaurants where demand outstrips supply (by definition.) My
guess is the net effect of this experiment is probably increased revenue for
the restaurants involved. It would be interesting if he presented numbers.

It's an interesting experiment. Should it be literally turned into a business,
as-is? No, because it requires a) lying on the phone and b) leaves the
possibility open that restaurants are going to leave money on the table, so
beyond being unethical you probably don't want to make enemies of the people
who are providing the service your customers are paying for. It's not viable,
and it's both dumb and unethical to form a serious venture around as-is. But
let's admit it, he's found something interesting that perhaps with some tweaks
could be turned into something disruptive. In the startups I've worked stuff
we ran small stuff like this all the time: things that we'd never try to scale
since we were breaking the rules a bit, but we were trying to learn something
and knew the way we were executing on it "in the small" did not cause any real
harm.

But if we are going to just hang people out to dry immediately for releasing
small experiments to test gaps in the market or test boundaries, then we've
lost what it means to be a hacker. I don't like the idea that my entire
reputation can be ruined if I launch a weekend hack that ends up on valleywag
and starts a hate train fueled by wider hatred around the tech industry. Part
of the reason startups work is because you can bend the rules a bit while you
are small and under the radar while you look around at the edges for the
opportunity for a real business you can stand behind. But with Twitter and the
tech press even single individuals no longer seem to be able to stay off the
radar if their experiment will drive clicks from angry readers and re-enforce
their stereotypes about the tech scene.

------
aaron695
How about stop the circle jerk.

They are parasitic, arguable, but so what if they are? People dislike that, so
what?

What is the story here exactly? It seems to me it's just link bait with
everyone agreeing they dislike these apps.

It's an article saying being rude is bad. I don't see why people think this
article has value other than they get to throw in a me too.

And at the end of the day, I'd imaging most people here are also working for
parasitic companies who just hide it a bit better. i.e. Advertising including
SEO. This to me is more of a real story.

