[gosmart4u]

I discovered this through a Facebook thread that has a ton of comments on it from non HN or techie peeps. Thought you might want to know what normal non-techies think.

"I think it is a great idea that has potential but I personally wouldn't use them because I can't find anything about them on the website. Looks like a scam."

"They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 minutes and add an about page so we know who they are."

"Not even a business at this point."

"This stuff kind of annoys me actually. I get the minimal product concept to test the market but when stuff like this is pushed out there it makes consumers very wary."

"These guys will take this to some bay area VC's and probably get funded because it blew up on Reddit and HN with a bunch of other techies. Meh!"

"It is going to take some serious $$ to get a service like this going. The support alone for handling inbound texts and having reps look for and book deals is a very big undertaking."

"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."

[Anderkent]

>"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."

... What.

This just doesn't compute. In what mindframe does this ever make sense as a complaint? If you're creating new jobs, even if they're low wage, you're just giving people more choice - they can now work at one more place than before, no one's forced into that, it literally can't do harm. And direct transfer of wealth from the wealthy to the poor is a positive, right?

I'm so confused.

[westiseast]

Part of the issue is that instead of creating traditional jobs that come with healthcare, benefits, strong legal protections, training and company car/whatever, the platform 'task economy' businesses often cut out these benefits and treat everyone like piece workers. So whereas previously eg a customer service rep got low wages but at least their tax was done for them and they had health benefits, now they get a low wage and have to do all that themselves. There's little chance of on-the-job development and training because all the business needs is more tech engineers to polish a front end or analyse data. Their workload (and therefore wages) can go up and down randomly leaving them out of pocket. All the while it puts some traditional businesses out of business because they can't compete on price/service with these companies, so ultimately there are less and lower quality choices. It pushes the burden of doing business down onto the workers rather than up towards richer investors. I'm not saying this 100% applies to Magic, but it's a general and very valid criticism of this type of "the Uber of X" business.

[acjohnson55]

I think that's a bit naive. In the micro, one new task economy startup might be a net gain, all other things being equal, but if it's part of a macro trend where skilled jobs are disappearing and being replaced with commodity task work, we might be sliding down a dangerous slope. Your final question sound kind of like the slightly more extreme argument that yacht factories enrich otherwise unemployed people. To me, that argument always rang hollow because how much wealth is really being transferred when demand for such things is fundamentally limited. I think ideally you want a broad base of jobs that can actually provide people with a middle class livelihood.

[jdmichal]

In addition to all this, let's be clear. The only wealth being "transferred" here is that of the minimum wage to workers. Everything else is making someone else rich, likely already rich investors.

[dlwj]

Justified inequality is good as long as it filters out high quality from low quality. The genius should be compensated more than the low-life.

Systems that classify human potential at birth though are rather unfair and amount to nepotism. The opposite of objective quality. No matter how many jobs a King or Queen creates, the upper class is always above the lower class.

Also, absolute transfer of wealth doesn't mean relative transfer. Slavery nowadays is actually more expensive then just hiring illegals because of housing and food costs. Wealth here is transferred in an absolute sense.

That said, many Uber drivers are very happy with the steeping stone it lends them. Flexible hours, and rather decent pay.

[xasos]

I think it's inherent that every economy needs a number of "lower-tier" employment opportunities for the "upper-tier" to exist and function well. And until robotization becomes viable and accepted, this will continue to be the case.

[gosmart4u]

I see both sides. Seems like there are way more low wage jobs out there though. Plenty to choose from.

[smoyer]

Does it have to be low wage? What if people are paid a base wage but also got a percentage of the fee? Those that truly became experts at finding a service/product that matched the customer's request could become increasingly proficient.

As for the "low wage jobs" comments, I'd pick this over being an Amazon warehouse automaton!

[gosmart4u]

"What if people are paid a base wage but also got a percentage of the fee"

That would be great!

[laxatives]

Given the context, it doesn't need to compute. Its how someone feels about the product. People aren't rational. That doesn't mean they aren't worth going after.

[Springtime]

> "They need to re-design their website so it doesn't look like it was slapped together in 10 minutes and add an about page so we know who they are."

It's interesting the contrast of first impressions. HN is often fortunate to receive a behind the scenes look into projects. Here we have a first-hand discussion with the creators commenting and answering questions, such as their previous businesses [1] and general updates [2], which helps us gauge the business more than perhaps a general user encountering the site. From the top-rated posts it also appears many here are so used to typical design choices that there's an appreciation for the more straight-forward approach.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087931

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9088208

[gosmart4u]

I understand what you are saying and agree with a lot of it. Not saying I completely agree with all of the comments, instead simply pointing out what your average non techie/HN people think.

The "general user encountering the site" will most likely be the users using this service so imo they are just as important as the HN crowd.

[gambiting]

>>"Yay! Another useless service that creates more low wage service jobs that cater to the wealthy."

That sort of comment annoys me actually. Is it not great that "wealthy" people pay for all of those service jobs? Out of all things, I literally can't see any problems with this. Unless the wages are below living wage of course,but it looks like the commenter has a problem with service jobs in general?

[jwatte]

In Mountain View, California minimum wage is below a living wage. I understand the sentiment: The scarcest resource for me is my time. Money is how we let people decide who gets to tell whom what to do with their time. A system where 0.1% tell 99.9% how to spend their precious time alive is not morally just. (I'm not saying we're quite that bad as a society -- at least not yet.)

[ilyaeck]

"A system where 0.1% tell 99.9% how to spend their precious time alive is not morally just"

Welcome to modern-day capitalism. This is exactly what it is, with or without Magic. Don't like it? Neither do I, but then we need a new socio-financial mechanism to redistribute wealth, which goes well beyond the scope of services like Magic.

[monochromatic]

> A system where 0.1% tell 99.9% how to spend their precious time alive is not morally just.

Says who? Where's the cutoff between just and unjust?

[Aeolun]

Exactly at the point where I place it.

[tylerlh]

I think a common sentiment about on-demand service startups is that it can lead to a dangerous situation for the lower-level employee, who is typically working as a 1099. Relatively low pay, and they're responsible for their own benefits, taxes, etc.

This is something I have a lot of interest in at the moment, so if anyone would like to chime in, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

[acjohnson55]

I've read some interesting writing on the topic:

- http://tomslee.net/2013/08/why-the-sharing-economy-isnt.html

- http://www.fastcompany.com/3042248/the-gig-economy-wont-last...

[gosmart4u]

There are plenty of decent paying service jobs. Plumbers, Roofers, etc. There are also tons and tons of low paying, low skilled service jobs. I suppose this is an entire different topic of discussion but something that needs to be looked at for the future of our kids. We need more higher paying skilled jobs regardless if they are service jobs or not.

[gambiting]

Since I can't edit anymore - my comment went from well above 1 point to negative 2. Could people explain what do they don't like about my argument, instead of downvoting please? All I said was, that I don't see anything wrong with people creating service jobs which pay a living wage - if you think otherwise, explain why.