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Comment by orcdork | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, and the whole web app industry is a scam, actual bandwidth cost is like a penny. And servers are even cheaper in Russia.

(Personally, I run my website on a shared php host for about $1)

Snarkiness aside, it's surprising to see comments like this here.

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Not surprising at all, because it's the main cause of aggressive and shady sales tactics. Which is exactly what happens when a company has too much money for sales and marketing. If someone created a business of selling X so profitable that 99% of sales is reinvested in sales and marketing you would have people selling X knocking your door 24/7 because sales would be the only way to scale up such business. However such profitable businesses are typically possible only because of false believes planted into the target audience. In this case, the parent comment debunks the false believe that paying $500-1000 for an average China-made mattress is a great deal.

Your comparison is unfair, given that new web apps are being created/updated (but also abandoned) constantly, and this requires work. Mattresses have been invented long ago, and can be mostly produced by robots. Mattresses should be a commodity, and be priced accordingly.

Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough.

A web page only needs to be coded once.

> Each new mattress has to be actually produced. It requires work funnily enough.

But that is work in the sense of energy, if robots are being used for production.

EDIT: Changed phrasing, to not distract from the actual argument.

If there is a comparison that is unfair, it's the one you just made between physical and mental work.

The people benefiting from this scam are not the ones doing the actual physical work.

I could say the same thing about webapps and mental work.

This is like the pot calling the kettle black.

I believe it is also like someone being snarky.

The evidence for the mattress industry being mostly a marketing scam is very old. There are a lot of brands but a very small number of manufacturers of the parts - there was only one for springs when this article was written seventeen years ago. http://www.slate.com/articles/life/shopping/2000/11/going_to...

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