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Comment by situational87 | Hacker News Reader

It's almost like we are intentionally bending over backwards to avoid hiring some human beings to do some real fucking work.

When did this become the mantra of every tech company? Any time a job is created it's viewed as an unfortunate mistake or side effect? Who are we even building all this for?

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The promise to investors of "tech companies" is zero marginal cost, and hence infinite scalability. As soon as you have to have to incur meatspace costs per transaction instead of doing it all in software, these sky-high unicorn valuations go out the window.

Exactly. Frequently the ones who deflate are ones that hadn’t figured out the zero marginal cost bit in time.

Don't be silly. Real work would mess up the scam, which works roughly like this: 1) Build a software system that appears to perform a real-world function. 2) Offer that real-world function at a loss. 3) Founders and early investors collect sweet, sweet bagholder dollars. That, of course is a Ponzi scheme, but the S-1 makes it all legal!

The founders, and, incidentally, the investors. Employees are a cost and customers are a burden.

> The founders, and, incidentally, the investors.

Isn't it the other way around?

Are you suggesting hiring employees to check every single listing on AirBnB? Does Craigslist verify every listing? For that matter, have newspapers ever done that with their advertising? AirBnB is a marketplace connecting buyers and sellers. Suggesting that a newspaper for instance send an employee to verify that an advertised car in a classified ad is precisely correct is a bit ridiculous but that’s what you seem to be suggesting with AirBnB. How is this any different than a student newspaper running ads for rooms for rent? On the hotel side, Booking.com doesn’t physically verify every hotel room listed either. Overstating amenities or even outright lying is as old as real estate and has nothing to do with “tech.”

Did you read the original vice article? The airbnb scam is much more harmful than an erroneous classifieds listing. If someone lies on Craigslist and you're smart enough to find out they did you walk away and all that's lost is time. The scammers on airbnb were promising a better place and then had them stay in a place that might as well be a squat. Wasting time, money, comfort, convince, etc.

When they say “We’re going to verify all our listings” I fucking expect them to verify listings.

When listings cost hundreds to thousands of dollars and they skim a significant fee off every rental they need to take some significant steps to eliminate fraud on their platform.

Craigslist is a horrible example because they don’t profit from most sales, and they don’t process the money between buyer/ seller. If AirBnb worked like CL, you’d be pay your host cash when you show up and if your host tried to pull shit like this you could just walk.

There are places on Airbnb that have never been rented. How would those places be verified, which is necessary if you want to say "Every listing is verified", if you do anything other than send employees to those places?

Craigslist, Booking etc don't make any claim that all places are verified so they don't need employees to do that work. If Airbnb are going to make that claim then they will need people to do the verifying.

> Are you suggesting hiring employees to check every single listing on AirBnB?

Yes.

Unless they don't actually plan to verify listings, in which case they should just state they don't verify listings. Then they don't have to hire anyone extra.

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