[zeckalpha]

Given the tendency of HN toward libertarian and free market approaches, I've been consistently surprised at the suggestions being made around this. This is free markets gone right: A buyer and seller finding the most efficient price for each.

[mdpopescu]

I upvoted you for the "this is free markets gone right" part, but I have no idea where you're seeing "a tendency of HM toward libertarian and free market approaches". Every time the issue comes up, I'm seeing about 90% comments against it. Maybe I'm reading the wrong threads :)

[TurboHaskal]

Such tendency exists, depending on your timezone.

[pavel_lishin]

I host a general-interest VBulletin forum, which at one point had something like a hundred people posting. One day, we discovered that via the "groups" functionality, there was a whole parasitic forum co-existing with ours - we didn't know it existed, we didn't know any of the people there, and they didn't know us, and the two groups didn't interact at all.

I wonder if it's possible for something similar to happen on specific-interest a messaging board, but just as a function of time zones. (e.g., somehow, most of the population of the board is from Spain and New Zealand, 12 hours apart.)

[irl_zebra]

Can you expand on what you were saying about a co-existing forum? I don't think I understand what you mean, but I'm intrigued.

[cosmie]

It sounds like a group of people abused the Social Group feature of vBulletin[1] to piggyback off of his forum to have their own little area without having to host their own forum/server. Depending on how vBulletin is configured, you can basically create a wholly independent forum within the Social Group that can't be accessed/seen outside of the group.

[1]http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Help:VBulletin:So...

[pavel_lishin]

Yup, I believe that's what they used. It's a documented feature, but one that I was completely unfamiliar with. I also opened registration, but wasn't monitoring new signups.

There wasn't any harm to it, but it's definitely something that can slip by an insufficiently wary admin.

[dragontamer]

Agreed. There were a whole bunch of people who would have done the work for more money, but there was one volunteer who was willing to do it for free.

The market connected the man with free-time and an ideal vision, with a project that needed to get done.

[s73v3r]

What? No it's not. If anything, it's the opposite of that. There is no way this guy could survive on that little money.

[m3rc]

So? The free market makes no concessions about who can live on what

[x5n1]

The seller wasn't going for the profit motive however. The seller simply wanted to work on the project as a volunteer. This is how he facilitated that. There is no profit motive here, and so really it's not even a business transaction, it's a volunteering oppurtunity.

[Navarr]

It's still 100% free market.

[iaw]

There's a lot of crappy things that are 100% free market. Oligopolies come to mind. Just because it's a free market solution doesn't mitigate the negative experiences this person created for the other bidders.

[jerf]

Just because someone said "free market" doesn't mean you are obligated to recite the generic Litany Against Free Markets. The specific point here is that in a free market you are welcome to decide to volunteer to do something. Nothing about "free markets" prevents it. If you judge yourself to receive more utility from volunteering, then go ahead and do it. No central organization will stop you.

The idea that free markets "obligates greed", in a particular cartoon-villain sense of greed, is propaganda, not what the theory actually says. (Now, we can have a very profitable discussion about whether and where it enables greed, or perhaps structurally encourages it, and some interesting conversations on whether "encourages greed" is even necessarily always bad. But there is no way in which one is obligated to greed, such that you are somehow betraying some sort of ideal if you decide for your own reasons to act altruistically.)

I'm sort of amused at the number of people getting peeved about this. This person is volunteering to work for nearly-free for government civil service... if you are anti-capitalism or anti-free market and think people should be doing more for and with government... isn't that exactly what this is?

Are we really going to try to spin "someone volunteered to help the government with something" into "free markets are evil"? It seems to get rather into the "doth protest too much, methinks" domain.

[iaw]

This individual didn't volunteer to help the government. He undercut all competition in a competitive bidding process because his costs are $0 for the project.

This is one of the known failures of free markets, regardless of the actors intent the effect of his behavior is negative for those trying to participate in the market as a means of sustenance.

I'm not mad at the guy, he can do whatever he wants. It's just kind of a crappy thing to do knowingly to other people and, if widespread, could have some strange externalities.

[jerf]

Yes... a project for government. Are we really going to play the "privilege" card for someone volunteering for civic service? Yes... he has the wherewithal to do the work for free, and instead of lounging around or buying an XBox, he provided free government work. If that's "privilege" wouldn't you like to see more of it?

There's no shortage of work, and no realistic chance that the government is going to be able to get all of its software tasks done via donations, so worrying about what happens if everybody or even a lot of people do this is really looking the gift horse in the mouth.

[Kalium]

> I'm not mad at the guy, he can do whatever he wants. It's just kind of a crappy thing to do knowingly to other people and, if widespread, could have some strange externalities.

I'm confused by this. According to this logic, it's a crappy thing to do to undercut anyone, ever, in any circumstance. Is that what you think?

[Lawtonfogle]

Even if the winning bid had been $3000, it wouldn't have changed the situation for everyone who lost the bid. By bidding $1, he only caused one person to lose the bid, which is whomever bid second lowest.

[iaw]

I understand where you're coming from but I disagree. Ignoring the emotional impact on the losing bidders I think that reducing the net payout of the market has a negative effect on all market participants.

If he won at a bid based on cost it would have kept the market at a price level comparable for all participants. He won the bid by ignoring all cost which has the effect of lowering the entire marketplace by pushing prices down.

[Lawtonfogle]

He only pushed prices down compared to what the potential second lowest bidder would've bid. If the second lowest bidder was $1 (or even sometime withing a few dozen dollars of that), then there is basically no effect by his decision.

[x5n1]

Well the problem is self correcting. People will stop giving quality bids if they don't think that there is any profit to be made because a bunch of volunteers have destroyed the market. There is no problem here. Only that anyone bidding should be aware that they won't get properly compensated for their work and time.

[giaour]

Too bad we're all supposed to benefit from what this market produces.

Having worked in a government agency before, I guess I wouldn't be surprised to hear that a needed project would be delayed indefinitely while we waited for market dynamics to correct themselves.

[iaw]

Yep. Fully agreed. I think it sucks for the other participants because it wasn't the "intent" of the market. At the end of the day the market is going to yield a solution, intent doesn't matter.

[zardo]

How is the market being destroyed correcting the problem? If people can't be compensated and work doesn't get done, the market is a failure.

[iaw]

The market isn't destroyed, it's just driven to zero. You can't force market participants to behave in the fashion you want. The market being driven to zero is one solution for the market, it optimizes for the people selling services and the people buying them, it just doesn't optimize for the profitability of those trying to make money off of selling their services.

[moron4hire]

There are more value systems than just monetary. This is basic, relative, marginal utility.