

Is San Francisco becoming toxic for new startups? - ronnix
http://blog.thefamily.co/post/90661830903/is-san-francisco-becoming-toxic-for-new-startups

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dougmccune
I've never met anyone who lives in SF who thinks buying/auctioning public
parking spaces is a good idea. Every single resident I know thinks it's just a
shitty thing to do and makes the city worse for everyone (other than the
people leaching money off the system I guess). Note that the author of this
post lives in Paris. Parking in SF is certainly a pain, but auctioning off
spots is just going to lead to fistfights in the street.

~~~
pyb
Also I don't understand why they didn't first launch in Paris, which has
exactly the same problem, possibly worse.

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withdavidli
>San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has just sent a cease-and-desist
letter to MonkeyParking a competing company that offers another mobile
application related to parking.

>In fact there seem to be nothing illegal about sharing or even selling
parking information.

Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that
encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money. That's less about selling
parking information than selling/leasing public property.

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jbigelow76

        >Way to side step the fact that MonkeyParking was basically a service that encourage people to hoard parking spaces for money.
    

Has MonkeyParking been around long enough to determine if people are
"hoarding" spaces to broker the info? After a certain length of time the four
or five bucks you could earn is offset by wasting time sitting in your car
waiting for info purchaser. I don't live in a city as congested as SF but I
could never imagine waiting more than about 5-10 minutes (even that's a
stretch) before deciding "fuck it, I don't need 4 bucks that bad".

~~~
withdavidli
See my answer above on why I think it would be worth it, also consider the
unemployed/underemployed.

I don't think the app had been out long enough to get a large user base. I
only saw it a 2-3 weeks ago and then the gov't acted pretty quickly. So no
data on my end. I think most people that read the article about the app
imagined the worse case scenario, which in my opinion was likely to happen.

Another scenario would be for tenants who have reserved parking to park out on
the streets, wait for someone that's will to buy the place in their apartment.
They would then move their car back to their reserved parking space until they
see an easy open space to take that's near them. This scenario doesn't take
much effort from the person abusing the system.

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jasonpriestley
Startups aren't good in themselves, they're good if they bring about helpful
innovations or good products etc.

Skirting regulations to privatize a public resource and make money off of it
harms society as a whole, so it's better to have as few startups like that as
possible.

Also, this article claims that this one, widely supported government action is
indicative of a "broader trend", but it offers no further evidence and I'm
having trouble thinking of many other cases. Arguably, SF has been rather
forgiving of companies which skirt regulations without really harming the
public - like AirBnB, Uber, or even Google buses.

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bruceb
Kinda funny that the post bemoans regulation then says: The truth is,
incumbent rent-seekers do have powerful lobbies even in the US. The oil
industry tried hard to stop Governor Schwarzenegger from passing more
stringent green air legislation in California.

One person's responsible legislation is another person's gov't innovation
killing regulation.

~~~
WalterSear
Many people flock to libertarian political views (and consequently, business
models) because they can't see where their selfishness ends and the rest of
the world begins.

Consequently, it's not surprising that the defense of their positions
ultimately devolve in to convoluted rationalizations for 'do as I say, not as
I do'.

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WalterSear
I was approached several months ago to build an app with the same business
model as MonkeyParking's queue-barging-for-cash. I walked away: the world
needs less Ayn Randian it's-not-nailed-down douchpreneurship, not more.

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army
I've heard people say before that usually when an article's headline is a
"provocative" question, the answer is no. That seems to hold true here.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
Betteridge's law of headlines
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

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dvcc
This was a pretty exaggerated post from what I read. It went from a city not
allowing public parking spaces to be sold, to the United States turning into
Japan.

It is hard to take it seriously with such exaggerations.

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tehabe
Was it here or somewhere else, I found a very interesting piece about the
price of free parking. And how too much parking makes a downtown even worse
than it could be. Because it makes it too cheap to use the car.

[http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/13/donald-shoup/who-
shou...](http://www.cato-unbound.org/2011/04/13/donald-shoup/who-should-pay-
parking)

It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking,
which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and $6 if
everyone wanted a space. Of course such a system wasn't realized.

BTW, they could just build a parking space and auction those parking spots, at
least it wouldn't be rent seeking. But I guess the prices for a square feet in
SF are a little too bit for such a project.

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Aloisius
> It also said that SF wanted to introduce a demand based system for parking,
> which meant it would be a few cents if nobody needed the space and $6 if
> everyone wanted a space. Of course such a system wasn't realized.

Demand based parking meters exist in SF. They've been tested in various areas
since 2011. They also have an app that helps you find parking using the same
sensors that adjust the price.

See: [http://sfpark.org/](http://sfpark.org/) or
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFpark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFpark)

~~~
tehabe
Ah, thanks.

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pla3rhat3r
Interesting read. I think it poses a good question about what can be
rented/sold as it pertains to information. I think MoneyParking is a bit
different than Sweetch from what I can tell so I don't think they have much to
worry about. I agree with the other comments that the article is pretty
slanted and not very well sighted. But it's a blog. Can't really expect much
journalistic integrity from a blog these days.

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SrslyJosh
If your business model is anything like MonkeyParking's, you're a fucking
parasite. Good riddance.

