[bitlord_219]

Good. The idea of a couple guys in Italy making money on trades of public parking spaces in SF baffles me. I assume they're not paying any taxes back to the city that maintains the spaces. How does one possibly defend this?

[forgottenpass]

How does one possibly defend this?

Well, it typically comes across like this (if you notice depends on if you like the company):

Their disruptive innovation is just scaring the shit out of those dinosaurs down at City Hall. Local government are stupid for protecting citizenry financially and/or setting minimum standards for a service. It doesn't matter if the service model is the kind of things that the law is meant to protect or genuinely a case not considered when drafting the law. All valley business models are golden, market success makes them beyond reproach!

[gizmo686]

They are proving value by solving a market inneficiency (a good, parking spaces, being available at sub-market rates, free). As such, they have a right to some of the profits.

By increasing the cost of parking spaces, they improve the efficiency of allocation by making sure they go to people who value them at $20 before people who value them at 0.003$

Or, more likely, they live outside of US juristiction, so they have plenty of time to make a profit, and when the law does catch up to them, they are likely not looking at anything worse then needing to shut down the service.