3 ms·

He literally listed SEO as the most important part of the business. Which means he seized control of a location(Google ranking) and then sold it back to those w

by hiou 10y ago

He literally listed SEO as the most important part of the business. Which means he seized control of a location(Google ranking) and then sold it back to those who could not compete with his Google rank. No sure where "Everybody wins" in that situation.

googletazer 10y ago
Wait a second, so how do you imagine it working? Millions of artists each with their own individual pages connected to Stripe? Out of these, some will still be top 10, the rest will be behind. Every artist who uses his platform wins since thats what connects them to consumers and work orders.
- pierrebai 10y ago
  The connected economy does have aspects that can be concerning: * Many see bartering as a grey business. Profiting from a disparity in pricing between buyers and sellers is always a touchy subject. The usual justification is the service of connecting sellers and buyers. One can honestly wonders if buyers and sellers really would not have found each other otherwise. * How much is the match-making worth. One person does the actual work, one is doing the referal. How much is referal worth? 1%, 5%, 20%, 50%? Most people value referral pretty low, right or not. * Driving prices down. By making markets more efficient, it creates a race to the bottom. It's almost inevitable. What starts as a nice service connecting sellers to buyers becomes a force that impoverishes the workers. The wal-martisation of the work-force only profits the few. It's unfortunate that to collectively save pennies on disparate items, we transform once-confortable workers to lower and lower standard of living. The author admits this on HN when he comments that artists asks for higher prices on Etsy than they get on his site. * The automation makes all this less palatable. Now the profit seems to be un-earned. What is the ethic of making X00k$ per years for what is admitted as requiring little actual labor? This is even more explicit when he claims that SEO is the driving factor. How does SEO prvides a service to the artists? It doesn't. It only profits instapainting. So most of his work is now spent on labor that is solely profits him. * SEO is itself a touchy subject. * How does writing a game that is a clone of a ripoff (2048 being a ripoff of threes) helps artists? The interesting thing is that all of these are white sins. The author, the provider of the service is not doing it out of malice and is providing, at least initially, a great service to some the workers who had trouble acquiring buyers. But as the service grows, becomes more efficient and dominant, the adverse effect of this very efficency drives the quality of life of the workers down. The more success instapainting gets, the more artist are tied to it, the more the closed competition drives prices down. The theory is that it leads to an equilibrium, and economically it does, but nothing, nothing prevents that equilibrium from being low. Economic efficiency drives quality of life right out.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    > the profit appears to be un-earned The ability to make profit off of investment is fundamental to capitalism. Do you think that it's unethical for your 401k to accumulate compound interest? Should you have to do some work for the companies your 401k holds shares in, in order for your fund to make a trade? So far Chris Chen has put in a ton of work and only now is realizing the gains from it. His risk and work are only now paying off. This is equally as egregious as your employer hiring you to write C++ code, and reaping the benefits of your code long after you have written it. I don't see how competition is closed. The only competition I see suppressed is that of the "order a painting from a website" category, because Instapainting has the superior network. In time, this could potentially get so huge as to be a violation of anti-trust laws, but I don't see that happening. Competition between painters is untouched. Other applications remain. If one wants a higher or lower quality painting, the buyer would want to use existing networks instead of this service. If someone wants an abstract painting, or a sculpture, they have to use a service that is less commoditized, such as word-of-mouth or an art company (interesting aside, North Korea fulfills many sculpture orders for national monuments internationally). Within the realm of medium-quality portraits, if Instapainting secures a monopoly, then yes, competition will be closed. However, this applies to almost anything that can be commoditized. In American/Canadian history, 19th century painters decried a commoditization of their work; they couldn't get commissions for impressionist or surreal work. Just portraits. I wrote this blob of text because I naturally want to defend developers who expose details about their businesses to HN. I don't want stories of how they built their businesses to be suppressed or discouraged. Especially since I see nothing unethical in this product; on the contrary, Chris Chen is giving these artists opportunity. They don't have to spend unpaid hours on Etsy or eBay, they can just focus on their work. Customers also get the opportunity to get a hand-painted portrait.
    - nwellinghoff 10y ago
      THIS "I wrote this blob of text because I naturally want to defend developers who expose details about their businesses to HN. I don't want stories of how they built their businesses to be suppressed or discouraged. Especially since I see nothing unethical in this product; on the contrary, Chris Chen is giving these artists opportunity. They don't have to spend unpaid hours on Etsy or eBay, they can just focus on their work. Customers also get the opportunity to get a hand-painted portrait."
dbancajas 10y ago
how did he sell it back? elaborate? For me the world is zero sum game. at least most of it. My gain is your loss when we are competing in the same space. It's not like he forced someone to work for him at pennies on the dollar. He created a portal to drive additional revenue (people who can go to instapainting.com but not buy on etsy/ebay).
- cdelsolar 10y ago
  economic bartering/trading/etc is definitely not zero sum.

by hiou 10y ago

googletazer 10y ago

Wait a second, so how do you imagine it working? Millions of artists each with their own individual pages connected to Stripe? Out of these, some will still be top 10, the rest will be behind. Every artist who uses his platform wins since thats what connects them to consumers and work orders.

pierrebai 10y ago
The connected economy does have aspects that can be concerning: * Many see bartering as a grey business. Profiting from a disparity in pricing between buyers and sellers is always a touchy subject. The usual justification is the service of connecting sellers and buyers. One can honestly wonders if buyers and sellers really would not have found each other otherwise. * How much is the match-making worth. One person does the actual work, one is doing the referal. How much is referal worth? 1%, 5%, 20%, 50%? Most people value referral pretty low, right or not. * Driving prices down. By making markets more efficient, it creates a race to the bottom. It's almost inevitable. What starts as a nice service connecting sellers to buyers becomes a force that impoverishes the workers. The wal-martisation of the work-force only profits the few. It's unfortunate that to collectively save pennies on disparate items, we transform once-confortable workers to lower and lower standard of living. The author admits this on HN when he comments that artists asks for higher prices on Etsy than they get on his site. * The automation makes all this less palatable. Now the profit seems to be un-earned. What is the ethic of making X00k$ per years for what is admitted as requiring little actual labor? This is even more explicit when he claims that SEO is the driving factor. How does SEO prvides a service to the artists? It doesn't. It only profits instapainting. So most of his work is now spent on labor that is solely profits him. * SEO is itself a touchy subject. * How does writing a game that is a clone of a ripoff (2048 being a ripoff of threes) helps artists? The interesting thing is that all of these are white sins. The author, the provider of the service is not doing it out of malice and is providing, at least initially, a great service to some the workers who had trouble acquiring buyers. But as the service grows, becomes more efficient and dominant, the adverse effect of this very efficency drives the quality of life of the workers down. The more success instapainting gets, the more artist are tied to it, the more the closed competition drives prices down. The theory is that it leads to an equilibrium, and economically it does, but nothing, nothing prevents that equilibrium from being low. Economic efficiency drives quality of life right out.
- linkregister 10y ago
  > the profit appears to be un-earned The ability to make profit off of investment is fundamental to capitalism. Do you think that it's unethical for your 401k to accumulate compound interest? Should you have to do some work for the companies your 401k holds shares in, in order for your fund to make a trade? So far Chris Chen has put in a ton of work and only now is realizing the gains from it. His risk and work are only now paying off. This is equally as egregious as your employer hiring you to write C++ code, and reaping the benefits of your code long after you have written it. I don't see how competition is closed. The only competition I see suppressed is that of the "order a painting from a website" category, because Instapainting has the superior network. In time, this could potentially get so huge as to be a violation of anti-trust laws, but I don't see that happening. Competition between painters is untouched. Other applications remain. If one wants a higher or lower quality painting, the buyer would want to use existing networks instead of this service. If someone wants an abstract painting, or a sculpture, they have to use a service that is less commoditized, such as word-of-mouth or an art company (interesting aside, North Korea fulfills many sculpture orders for national monuments internationally). Within the realm of medium-quality portraits, if Instapainting secures a monopoly, then yes, competition will be closed. However, this applies to almost anything that can be commoditized. In American/Canadian history, 19th century painters decried a commoditization of their work; they couldn't get commissions for impressionist or surreal work. Just portraits. I wrote this blob of text because I naturally want to defend developers who expose details about their businesses to HN. I don't want stories of how they built their businesses to be suppressed or discouraged. Especially since I see nothing unethical in this product; on the contrary, Chris Chen is giving these artists opportunity. They don't have to spend unpaid hours on Etsy or eBay, they can just focus on their work. Customers also get the opportunity to get a hand-painted portrait.
  - nwellinghoff 10y ago
    THIS "I wrote this blob of text because I naturally want to defend developers who expose details about their businesses to HN. I don't want stories of how they built their businesses to be suppressed or discouraged. Especially since I see nothing unethical in this product; on the contrary, Chris Chen is giving these artists opportunity. They don't have to spend unpaid hours on Etsy or eBay, they can just focus on their work. Customers also get the opportunity to get a hand-painted portrait."

dbancajas 10y ago

how did he sell it back? elaborate? For me the world is zero sum game. at least most of it. My gain is your loss when we are competing in the same space. It's not like he forced someone to work for him at pennies on the dollar. He created a portal to drive additional revenue (people who can go to instapainting.com but not buy on etsy/ebay).

cdelsolar 10y ago
economic bartering/trading/etc is definitely not zero sum.