"ParkModo was recently offering $13 an hour to drivers who would occupy parking spaces in the Mission District during peak weekend times and then sell the spot through its app, a Craigslist job posting showed.

"'Get paid $13.00 per hour just to park!' the ad read. 'Our company is launching an awesome app that rewards people to sell their on-street parking spots before leaving to people who need a spot.'

"It went on to say that: 'Once you are parked, using the app, you will offer the spot for sale. … Once someone purchases the spot, you will complete the transaction with the buyer and then find another space to park in and start the process all over again!'"

It's as if AirBnB were paying people to burn down hotels.

Where do we go from here? An app to sell your spot in the grocery store checkout line?

Wow, I remember when parking spot squatting was the province of bold homeless men near nightclubs.

This sort of rent-seeking on the commons is particularly distasteful, but simply 'cracking down' on it seems like a wasted opportunity.

If the demand and divide are such that this is a real issue it seems like time for a progressive congestion tax or similar. Collect and invest in infrastructure.

There's also the problem that SFPark isn't very widespread because "local merchants" who are a kind of caveman often oppose it.

Still doesn't absolve them of the distasteful nature of their actions, of course.

Use the revenue to build some much needed trains.

San Francisco has been pushing a hard line anti-car agenda, while making no noticeable improvements to transit. MUNI is a disaster being held hostage by unions. Bending to environmentalists to not address legitimate need for parking. Inefficient responses to groups like Critical Mass that breed resentment against bikes. Refusal to address the vagrant problems resulting in crap covered sidewalks. etc.

"a hard line anti-car agenda"

Seriously? The city has almost half a million parking spaces, nearly all of which are free of charge. There are no congestion charges.

"Inefficient responses to groups like Critical Mass that breed resentment against bikes"

As opposed to the Critical Mass that the car drivers stage every single day at 4:30pm? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAO20jJHNuI

Ultimately, the best way to root-cause a policy issue is to follow the money. Someone is making money from a lack of governance.

When all viable candidates for a position are already left of center, the only way to shine is to seem more-progressive and out liberal the other guy.

As evidenced by the problems on the right currently - the biggest danger is that as we keep creeping to the extreme left, the "far out nutjobs" are only a tiny step away and seem almost reasonable by comparison.

They might just change this and start charging but that's a pretty stupid idea. Free market is not an answer to everything.

Right now, "free parking" is a tax on everyone actually living in the city. They pay more for living because prime space is given away for free to store heaps of steel on it. Moreover, building regulations require new projects to provide parking spots proportional to the number of units, even when many city dwellers no longer own a car. That drastically increases development costs in cities that are starved for housing.

The problem here is one of rationing. There are a limited number of spots; who gets them?

In the current situation, the spaces are free/subsidized, but you pay instead by driving in circles. That's a big waste of time and adds to traffic congestion. Maybe that's more "fair" in some sense, but that doesn't make it good.

The app in question does either nothing or very little to help ration. It allows people who really need to park, and have the money to pay for it, to be more certain that they will get a space, which I guess is something. But it creates so many bad incentives that it's making the problem worse, not better.

The city is in a better position to create market incentives, because they can charge for the entire duration that you're in the space, not just the moment you happen to park. That means people would have no reason to camp out in a space waiting for the price to go up, which means more spaces will be available for useful purposes. It saves time and congestion, but perhaps loses out on some definitions of "fairness".

Any other ideas?

I'm not even sure it's more "fair" - as you said, you're still paying. I suppose a part of the cost (time wasted) is sort of indexed by income...

Personally, I think we’d all be better off if American cities were friendlier to pedestrians, cyclists, and buses, and stopped catering so heavily to automobiles. Devoting huge amounts of space to free/cheap street parking is incredibly expensive and inefficient, compared to just about any other use.

Not to be too pedantic but ... the roads in SF were built long before the car was invented. Think about it, if SF were built _for_ cars, why would it be at the end of a peninsula so cars have to cross bridges to get to it? SF was built so that it was easy to access by sea from ships. Cars came much, much later and the issues with parking, etc... really stem from the city not being in a very good location vis a vis cars. I agree that roads are a public good but I think they should be used to provide the greatest economic benefit which, in my opinion, is not to get commuters into the city.

I'd be seriously reconsidering plans to do anything where the parking was that expensive.

EDI for clarity, of course there are no treaties about parking spaces. But treaties usually include general provisions about courts recognizing each others' judgments in criminal and civil matters, not least to prevent cross-border financial fraud, tax evasion and so on. It's not foolproof because not all territories have treaties, eg someone based in Somalia could run an illegal internet business with relative impunity because the US has no treaties with Somalia (as far as I know). On the other hand, countries that have no criminal or commercial treaty relations with other countries tend to be hellholes.

US-based Internet companies have flourished due to the relatively hands-off regulations concerning websites. To suddenly apply every foreign law that's ever been written would be a significant chilling effect on business.

* I'm not sure about places like North Korea, but trying to offer services there would be embargoed by domestic sanctions in any case.

I'm not sure why so many here are so quick to throw the hackers under the bus as soon as they agree with the government's demands. This kind of thing could happen to anyone, and ruin any controversial startup.

So what if it's a small team offering this service remotely? What stops them deploying this in their home town of Rome? And what makes you so sure that claims against them would be laughed out of court? True, any judgment against them would take a long time to enforce, hence the city exploring the more practical route of asking Apple to cease enabling their activity. But cross-border litigation happens all the time.

He meant running a business, from SF, whose primary activity takes place in Rome, and was also illegal in Rome.

Not just running a business from SF that's illegal in Rome.

If you are unable to follow a city or county's laws, then you either need to go about trying to change those laws in that city or country, or not operate there. They released an app specifically to do something that is not legal in a specific city - look at that twitter post.

You can't do something illegal in one city just because it's legal elsewhere - why should an app be allowed to?

The app itself invites users to 'request a parking spot' and asks 'how much would you pay?' The knowledge of imminent departure is just an instrumentality for gaining occupancy of the parking spot, to claim otherwise is disingenuous. There's a mentality among some hackers that 'the means justify the ends,' ie if you can find some definitional wiggle room on what you're doing it automatically validates the outcome. That works OK on computers, but the law is not a big computer system and does not operate on the same sort of binary logic as computers do.

"It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or corporation to enter into a lease, rental agreement or contract of any kind, written or oral, with or without compensation, for the use of any street or sidewalk."

According to the article it's plain illegal.That's the problem.

I was going to ask what the actual law was, but it seems I've found some version of the gist of it here. Where I live (not San Fransisco) we have privatized parking in plots of land that aren't on the public street. Would using this app on places like that in SF be legal?

Basically it would depend on whether the parking space vendor's contract with motorists sought to prohibit such arrangements as a condition of use. Of course that's a rather heavy-handed unilateral tactic, but you're not legally required to enter into a parking arrangement with them so if you don't like their terms and conditions, you don't park there in the first place. The mere inconvenience to you of having to seek other parking or transit options doesn't constitute a property interest, so you have no particular claim on the fairness of the T&C. Same logic that allows parking lot operators to disclaim liability for theft/damage to your vehicle.

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!

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.