I completely agree with this article, but wonder if it's inevitable for someone to jump in and try to make profit off of services for the public good if there are people out there willing to pay for it.

For example, if we had sufficient parking in the city, these startups would never even cause a blip. Someone must have been driving around for half an hour looking for parking and then thought to themselves that, at that point, they would pay someone good money to just be able to find a spot - and suddenly the idea for a business was born...