Meh, swoopo and its ilk will go the way of the shell games at carnivals. Eventually “everyone” will know that they’re just a scam, except the few fools who think they can beat them.
And what harm. As a previous poster, said, fools and their money are easily parted. Mark my words: swoopo will be long gone before any regulation is forced upon it. I mean, if these guys are making the amount of money you say they are (and it seems they are) then I give it another 12 months, tops, before they retire and buy a tropical island.
And in fairness, as has been pointed out, they DO make it very clear what you are getting into. So there are no excuses.
If I may make on suggestion before I go; if you’re going to make a crusade against systems designed to innovatively f**k people out of their hard earned money, why not take up arms against something a bit more relevant, like, oh I don’t know, 90% of ERP software out there
Ryan M, you misunderstand his point. Jeff knows there’s no fraud involved. He considers that “taking advantage of stupid people” is “evil”, and that “evil” things must be punished with government.
Of course, it ignores the fact that the transactions are honest and voluntary and the fact that allowing government to define “evil” is the fastest way to death.
I agree that it’s a gambling site, but like others say, there is nothing inherently wrong with gambling, it’s the people who run it and the people who do it that are the issue. Considering it’s pretty much a closed loop system with very little affect on the average non-gambler, there isn’t much of a reason to regulate.
I don’t believe people have the right to be protected from themselves just as much as I don’t believe you have a right not to punch yourself in the face. Of course you do, you’re an idiot for it, and if the families of said people aren’t smart enough to leave these addicts, then they are perpetuating the system themselves, especially (in the US) considering the HUGE amount of resources dedicated to helping said families.
So no, no regulation needed here, these guys may be scum of the earth, but nobody can reliably regulate this quite grey area of morality.
People continually feed off each other’s greed and selfishness. It’s a horrible planet that we don’t step in to stop it, but some bright light came up with the expression “caveat emptor” and we’ve been stuck ever since. Maybe we should reconsider labeling this idea as being good?
I think Swoopo IS gambling.
It causes gambling addiction because the auction doesn’t have a clearly defined finish date. In ebay you can bet as long as you have time to do it, but once the finish date has been reached, that’s it, you can’t keep betting.
The problem is that a Swoopo user can’t easily realize that she’s gambling. Swoopo is not been honest on this.
So, Swoopo should be treated as a Gambling site. That way, whoever wants to get in the game will know that it’s not about skills.
These applications create a negative impression toward those of us who are developing games and activities that don’t promote gambling.
I am not a proponent of regulation, because it often leads to restrictions on all of us.
The best thing we can do is to spread the word and demonstrate that there are many great alternatives to gambling our money away.
Thank you for opening this discussion and raising the voice of warning.
I always felt this way about sites like Priceline.com, where you ‘name your own price’: the site just matches your request with offers they know of (such as airlines’ published rates), then gives you the cheapest one they have that is below your request, if any. So essentially you are guaranteed to overpay, by some unknown amount, every single time.
In this case there’s no money loss if you don’t get the price you requested - however, the commercials make it seem as though your request is actually presented to the hotel/airline/car rental place, which is misleading.
I don’t know that I’m in favor of regulating Swoopo (as I noted earlier, there are far more blatant forms of gambling that are perfectly legal when conducted under the auspices of high finance), but the government regulates “evil” in various ways all the time. All regulation stems from a moral framework of some type.
The best example is, I think, the enhanced penalties which are universally apply to killing someone on purpose vs. killing them accidentally.
The government is imposing additional regulation in spite of the fact that the utilitarian outcomes are the same. Of course, it’s recursive, because utilitarianism is itself a moral framework.
So your argument becomes an argument against all laws, everywhere; including the laws defending private property (against theft or expropriation), contract rights (civil law), currency (against counterfeiting), and laws to restrict the government actions itself. All of those laws have their moral foundation in utilitarianism.
* Order of Saint Benedict – a monastic order
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* Old Saybrook (Amtrak station), Connecticut, United States; Amtrak station code OSB
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* Orthodox Speakers Bureau
* Oracle Service Bus - Part of the Oracle SOA Suite of technologies.
* accr. - Original Signature By
I have a guess, but some of the others would be amusing answers.
this reminds me of barnes and noble when they use brokers worldwide to deliver your stuff!!! some times it arrives sometimes it doesn’t :).
are all auctions like this? how come a bid is non refundable? is there some place i can get ego points by saying “look i bid” do you get out bid by famous people? “i was out bid by bill gates man, i had no chance”
these guys should look for a way to give back to bidders. can’t they charge only those bids that were successful? like my favourate B&N who charge you $29 regardless the size ofr value of what you ship express.
i love B$N and use them regularly to buy books. despite the subtle way of getting you to pay that $29 for ups, they are not bad folk. these swoopo chaps are just plain evil!! unless jeff has misrepresented here, THERE JUST IS NO UP SIDE TO SWOOPO. win or lose you are screwed
If people are addicted to gambling I feel it’s their fault and their duty to reach out to help themselves. If they don’t want to change they won’t. Same goes for swoopo. This stupid site would die out if people would just realize it’s a screw.
I have accepted that “you can’t fix stupid” and if people are going to run amok throwing their money away - that’s our reality. In my mind, people need to step up and start learning a lot more these days and ultimately hold themselves accountable for their actions.
I just checked out an auction for a TV. They say that tv recently went for $262.65… That means 26265 bids at $.75 each… They ‘auctioned’ that TV with MSRP $1,199.90 and made $19,698.75
Darrel: re your example of the user who placed 553 to “win” 300.
The worst part of this, and the part that I think makes swoopo so brilliantly evil, is that every time the “winner” decided to bid, it was ENTIRELY RATIONAL.
By the time they’ve placed 300 bids on the auction, they’re faced with two possibilities: either walk away and lose the 300 bids they’ve placed, or continue on and place just one more bid for a chance at winning a full 300! Every time you bid, all your previous bids are a sunk cost and can’t be factored into your cost/benefit analysis.
