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Comment by brm | Hacker News Reader

He calls it evil but doesn't provide much justification other than what he assumes people already believe.

In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?

If someone uses their available knowledge and decides to enter a swoopo auction, is it really much different than choosing to play at a casino even though we know the house is against us (gambling's existence is something that few outside government seem to have a problem with?)?

Is the major hang up that people can pay but not win? If this is known up front can someone provide the rationale behind this being "evil"?

Funnily enough I find that the debate over swoopo being evil seems to parallel the debate over spec work being evil (just different currencies involved).

Can someone point me to literature on the rational arguments for and against consumer protection?

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In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?

I wouldn't go as far as saying this auction idea is 'evil' but I personally feel it is morally dubious. This site was put together by probably quite talented people with knowledge of game theory. How are these people using their talent? To make the world a better place, to forward the human race or to take money off others who are more ignorant than themselves?

These auctions have losers who lose money and gain nothing. Maybe those who lose enjoy the chase. However, I personally wouldn't be comfortable working on a system such as this.

and now that you can use bids as credit towards the retail price if you don't win the auction is this negated?

Actually yes.

> In the interest of philosophical discussion... why is maximizing profit using knowledge of consumer behavior "evil" so to speak?

Because people can be deceived. Math is hard. If I were to belive Coding Horror, even Paul Erdos didn't understand the Monty Hall problem.

If you take profit on people's naivety, you're evil. Because every human being is ignorant about something. We're not perfect. We're not always right.

BTW, I'm in favour of gambling, when it's clearly marked as such. You don't get better at Swoopo by playing Swoopo, you only win by not playing it all. To say Swoopo labels itself as a system where luck does not play the main role is deceiveing.

evil (n.) - 1. Killin folks, usually. 2. Preying on human weakness for your own personal gain at others' expense.

Seriously, if you don't think of this as evil, what's your definition of evil?

gambling's existence is something that few outside government seem to have a problem with

Um, what planet are you from? At least 3 major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) regard gambling as evil.

There are a couple of explicit condemnations of gambling in the Qur'an, but not in the Bible [as far as I know, corrections welcome] - though things like condemnations of "love of money" might count as indirect condemnations of gambling, I suppose.

I recognise that some religious traditions take guidance from more than just the official holy books, but even the official Catholic view seems fairly neutral: that gambling is not immoral in itself, as long as certain conditions are met:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06375b.htm

There are none in the Bible. The closest you get are exhortations about work, or warnings about pursuing money. Some folks extrapolate from there, but the arguments against it are always indirect. More often than not, they're not scriptural at all, but are based on practical wisdom ("It destroys lives! It's unproductive!") that doesn't have a lot of basis in actual practice.

It's not anything like widespread enough that you could say it was a "Christian teaching," though. While you can still find people who say it's sinful (and you will always be able to), it's getting so that standard Southern Baptist Sunday School materials say, "Is Gambling a Sin? Well . . . not reeeeeaaallly . . . but we don't think it's a good idea." And I think those guys are usually just about the last to let go of issues like that.

All religious traditions take guidance from more than just holy books (many religions do not even have holy books), and the idea (or assumption) that laypeople can determine religious truth by reading the holy book themselves is pretty much restricted to Protestant Christianity.

The fact that Swoopo promotes itself as an auction/shopping site and lists "strategy" as part of the experience skates uncomfortably close to the "no fraud" clause listed in that link, although offering discounts to losing bidders would seem to give them a solid "it's only gambling if you choose to treat it that way" out.

Not in the bible, but the talmud says that someone who "plays with doves [i.e. gambles on pigeon races]" is disqualified from being a witness (i.e. their moral character is suspect).

Gambling is considered a form a stealing since the person who lost doesn't actually want to give their money to you, they are forced to by the roll of the dice. In normal commerce you get something when you pay. (And don't say people enjoy playing, no one enjoys playing, people enjoy winning.) I believe, but am not sure, that lotteries are not considered as bad though.

"Evil: preying on human weakness for your own personal gain at others' expense".

I could easily make a dozen arguments where respectable companies do exactly that. For instance, is Starbucks preying on the "weakness" of humans that desire caffeine? Is EA preying on the weakness of humans that desire an escape via gaming? By your definition of evil, everyone and everything participating in a capitalist economy is evil.

Frankly i see nothing wrong with Swoopo, even if some end up worse off than they would have been had they not participated. This is because i place the burden of responsibility on the actor, not the facilitator. Caveat Emptor.

What about if nearly everyone is worse off? Putting the burden of responsibility on the actor is fine, but Swoopo is not in the same category as Starbucks and EA, and claiming that everyone participating in a capitalist economy does so at the expense of others is pretty disingenuous.

Claiming that everyone participating in a capitalist economy does so at the expense of others is pretty disingenuous.

Perhaps not everyone, but it seems to me that a large portion of firms in a capitalist economy prey on some human weakness or another, to varying degrees.

* it seems to me that a large portion of firms in a capitalist economy prey on some human weakness or another, to varying degrees.*

Wow.

I take it you have a really, really broad definition of "human weakness" for this belief system to continue working for you.

Car broken and I can fix it for 20 bucks? You have a weakness for not knowing how to do auto repair. Need a good resume and come to my resume service? You have an inability to write and a lack of work, due to a weakness of the system. Need a program to balance your checkbook? You obviously have a problem with math, could be lazy in your account habits, etc.

This kind of definition will work anywhere -- suggesting that perhaps a new one would be better.

You don't have to stretch that far, just think about all the psychologically manipulative tactics used in advertisement.

advertisement falls under freedom of speech as long as no spurious claims are made. people have free will. the evil advertising box doesn't force people to do anything.

I noted that DanielBMarkham didn't have to stretch that far and use examples such as a resume service as preying on the "weakness" of humans not being able to write as an reducio ad absurdum argument that cellis has an overly broad definition of human weakness when cellis stated that a large portion of firms in a capitalist economy prey on some human weakness or another. I continued to note that the psychologically manipulative tactics used in advertisement are used by a large portion of firms in a capitalism economy in order to prey on some human weakness or another, implying that it is not as broad a definition of human weakness as DanielBMarkham makes it out to be.

In a free, ideal capitalist exchange, it is not a case of one party benefiting at the others expense. It can't be, by definition, because then the free agent that is losing would not enter into the exchange. It is an exchange that both people benefit from. This is examined in more detail in the first couple of chapters of http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC... (a textbook, not a blog post), but the short version is that due to the fact that different entities have different valuations on different items, free trade results in scenarios where both parties pay X-personal-valuation and receive X+N-personal-valuation, resulting in a profit. (The big failure people have in grasping this is missing the facts that valuations are personal, and valuations != money. After that, this logic flows simply and inexorably.)

Obviously not all exchanges are free and ideal, but both the cases you cite (Starbucks and EA), it's pretty close. I'd say 100% in the Starbucks case (you can get coffee from lots of places) and a little less so in EA's case due to the fact they have an IP monopoly on EA games (you can not obtain a Madden game from a non-EA source), but still, nobody's forcing you to buy Madden games either.

Swoopo is not like that. It is not a mutually-beneficial exchange between two parties; one party wins and numerous parties lose, with only one other party winning in theory (the auction "winner") and that still only at the discretion of Swoopo (if the "winner" is a plant, how would you tell?). Because the losing party entered into it freely and with reasonable knowledge of what is going on, I do not favor forcibly shutting it down either, as I can not imagine what such a law would look like anyhow. But we can still call a spade a spade; this is not like a free market exchange. This is a con game.

(The other possible out is that the auction losers are paying for an intangible feeling of fun or something, which is a valid thing to do if you choose not to judge people's value functions, but I suspect that a fair analysis would show that they are not really winning on this front either. Part of that analysis would be to show that Swoopo is the best way to obtain that feeling and I have to imagine a conventional casino is a better choice there for most people.)

>(The big failure people have in grasping this is missing the facts that valuations are personal, and valuations != money. After that, this logic flows simply and inexorably.)

Till this point, I thought you were defending Swoopo and your logic actually made sense to me because the parties involved in the auction have different valuations. If a person spends USD 10 bidding on a product, the mere possibility of having a USD 1200 product for such a low price may be more valuable to him than Swoopo's valuation of the transaction (USD 10). Plus the suspense and thrill adds to the valuation by the bidder :)

-"but still, nobody's forcing you to buy Madden games either."

And no one is forcing someone to bid on a Swoopo auction as well.

"Because the losing party entered into it freely and with reasonable knowledge of what is going on, I do not favor forcibly shutting it down either, as I can not imagine what such a law would look like anyhow."

Read fail?

That's not an argument against the definition, that's an argument about whether certain actions meet it. I think it's clear that Swoopo does, and actually, yeah, I do think that a lot of other companies are or approach evil in the way they do business. Just because it's widely done doesn't mean it's good.

funny thing about the internet, virtually everyone mistakes discussion for argument. Very little of what I said was a statement of belief.

I should perhaps have said that I was simply looking for someone to explain the sides so I can make a better decision about how I view it rather than just taking the viewpoint of an article in slate as certainty

"Um, what planet are you from? At least 3 major world religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) regard gambling as evil."

They also regard all manner of activity evil that most people (and even adherents) find perfectly acceptable and engage in every day. Bacon, beer, and shamefully clad women come to mind.

So let me ask what planet you are from. Have you ever gone to a casino and asked the gamblers what their religion was?

Wait, what? Pointing out that there exist institutions that aren't the government that regard gambling as evil somehow means I think people don't gamble, or that I think those beliefs are valid? That makes no sense.

I guess I don't understand the point of your post. Are you trying to say gambling is evil or not?

Neither. I was pointing out that plenty of other people think it is, in response to GP's statement that "gambling's existence is something that few outside government seem to have a problem with".

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