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Comment by reasonish | Hacker News Reader

It's all about who you know. That's all that matters in the startup world.

How is texting a pizza order to Magic, who then text it to a pizza company (Introducing a middle man) making the world a better place?

It's so well suited to startup founders though - Hey I'm way too busy and important to do menial things, I need a personal assistant on my phone that can do things for me while I'm saving the world by making some crappy website, which will never make any money, but will get bought for billions by some bigger fool because we know people who know people.

Magic sounds like it's right out of "Silicon Valley" (The TV Show).

I'd be surprised if anyone remembers Magic in a years time. Either that or it'll get bought by Amazon for $20bn. Or maybe both...

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> It's all about who you know. That's all that matters in the startup world.

Exactly. If they were't connected to YC or someone else that could grease the wheels they would have their merchant account and CC acceptance terminated in the first 72 hours for the obvious and flagrant violations outlined in the Wired article, and quietly fade into the ether.

Is the cynicism truly necessary? I can practically taste the bile dripping off your comment.

Every minute that someone's spending on some random, menial task is a minute that someone isn't getting something else more productive done. Maybe the world isn't getting saved, but I find it hard to call a service that gives people more time in their day anything but "making the world a better place".

There's still a person spending their minutes on a random, menial task, it's just not someone with a Hacker News account anymore.

Yes, but with scale, they'll get better at it. They might even be able to automate large portions of it.

Also, it's a person spending their minutes on it, who might not have a better job available to them at the time.

Don't get mad because someone is willing to OFFER money for a service that YOU would find demeaning to provide. Just don't take that job. Problem solved. Sheesh.

Great idea. If you're not in the gig economy, you're a turk.

Just off the top of my head, World of Warcraft gold farmers. This has been a thing for a LONG TIME.

Is you argument really that if there is something that "has been a thing for a LONG TIME" that it isn't problematic and that we shouldn't be concerned about avoiding it?

I'm seeking to improve the argument. Pretending that THIS is something new is a bad argument. If you want to assail the general category of what you consider to be demeaning jobs, then go for it.

No, you're doing far more than seeking to improve somebody else's argument. You're making your own argument, while pretending not to. This is clearly an argument: "Just don't take that job. Problem solved. Sheesh."

It's not even a very good argument, in that you're just demonstrating the willful ignorance the previous poster was pointing out.

Hilarious. I think it's good for an economy to offer jobs, even ones you find demeaning. People are free to not take those jobs. If enough people don't take that job, then they'll have to either offer more money for the job, or they'll have to find a new way to do the job. I believe in markets. I believe in minimum wages as well, but those are not mutually exclusive concepts.

You dismiss this entire line of reasoning as "willful ignorance," rather than ACTUALLY RESPONDING TO IT AND TELLING ME WHY YOU DISAGREE.

Sorry, but that's just arrogant and rude.

I had a completely different problem with kefka, which was that they said "Great idea." As though this concept of turkification were something new. It's not something new. Therefore, objecting to THIS idea on the basis of it "being a new idea" is a bad argument. If you want to reject the entire category of turk jobs, that's ANOTHER DISCUSSION.

See? Two different arguments.

So don't conflate them, okay?

I understand that you have a faith in markets; free-market fundamentalism is depressingly common on HN.

This points out a problem, which is that we are not acting with sufficient empathy toward the people who are doing the work:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9108579

Here you shallowly dismiss that the problem is a problem at all:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9108684

That's the willful ignorance I'm talking about.

It is not my job to solve your ignorance here, but suffice to say that I don't think the markets-solve-everything hypothesis stands up when you look at historical problems with labor issues over, say, the last century. Markets are fine tools when we set out to solve a particular problem, but they have been poor masters.

Precisely.

Markets (and capitalism) are great tools. They should not be seen as the end-all-be-all. Same with socialism, communism, as well as other socioeconomic -isms.

The failing of the markets is the lack of empathy for the fellow human. We know from the way the US looks how capitalism fails. Poor people are disempowered and marginalized from the system, because little money = little power over self. There is also a downward push to bring everyone into poverty.

The current gig economy and using mTurk are both ways to make previous corporate internalites to the public as externalities, whilst privatizing profit. Along with that, they also rely on having none of the protections of an employee, yet with all the requirements of one. It conveniently gets rid of the reforms we fought for in the '30s.

Are there solutions to the marginalization of the workforce, along with poverty working class? Yes.

1. Minimum income. Everybody gets it, regardless of a means test. This could be built up by the local level or state, where fees and fines and such could start the basis of a minimum income, even if it's $20/mo. Start small, look big.

2. Change laws to encourage worker cooperatives. Worker cooperatives, like Mondragon, have shown that they care for the fellow worker, because they all own the company as well as manage the company. It would also fit inside our current idea of ownership and contracts. The goal here is to enable political decisions to make company creation in this route easier. Thus the 3'rd...

3. Change unemployment law that allows you and 9 of your unemployed friends who want to start a cooperative to cash out of rest of unemployment to start a business: a worker cooperative. This has been a law in Italy since '85, and is greatly successful. And given how small businesses are celebrated, this should be a great law to pass regardless party.

"markets-solve-everything"

When did I say that?

I actually said explicitly that I believe in minimum wage. That already puts me well out of free-market fundamentalism.

If you've read some of my comments on HN, you'll see that I'm also in favor of regulation.

I happen to also believe that a Basic Living Standard is necessary.

I wish we had single-payer health care.

And I'm all for free, socialized education. (With BLS [stipend] on top of it.)

So, no, I'd say I fall WELL outside of the free-market fundamentalism you're referring to.

So, when you call me willfully ignorant, it's pretty damned offensive.

I happen to think data entry is demeaning. Some people enjoy it. I think busing tables is demeaning. Some people enjoy it. I have a friend who loves moving boxes in a factory, because he has free time to think about his poetry. I would never want to sell tooth paste to a super-market chain. Some people like to deal cards at casinos. Some like to sell pull-tabs. Some are waiters and airline stewards. Some people clean bedpans. Some clean houses after grisly murders.

Some people LOVE being a concierge. Well, this is a digital concierge service. And just because you and bendoernberg think it's menial and degrading, doesn't mean IT SHOULD BE ILLEGAL TO OFFER THAT JOB. Or, that we as a culture should be embarrassed that job exists.

If a person hates their job, I want to give them every chance to get out of that job. Every chance. But you're angry the job exists... regardless of whether someone WANTS to do it, for the pay they receive?

> we are not acting with sufficient empathy toward the people who are doing the work

I can't imagine why you think that of me. My grandpa worked four jobs at a time, sometime - because he grew up during the Great Depression, and if you can get work, you work. He set bowling pins. He delivered milk. He drove a school bus. He laid brick. All kinds of crap. Meanwhile, I TYPE in an air-conditioned building, and they pay me VASTLY more than he ever earned. It's ridiculous. And my peers are upset because the product owner violated the spirit of Agile when he made them change priorities mid-sprint (because we were shipping defective product). WHAT? GET OVER YOURSELF!

I want affordable housing. I want upward mobility. I want meritocracy and elbow grease. I want a safety net, and government-supplied-bootstraps. I want people to be able to declare bankruptcy, unlike today. I want an immigration system that's less like the mythical Labyrinth, and has empathy for immigrants.

So, are you really "solving my ignorance," or are you reading WAY TOO MUCH into one line of thought - and then running with it, half-cocked, and totally arrogant?

Well hello, drama.

I'm not commenting on your entire history as person, let alone going back generations. My comments are about what you wrote here, in the things I responded to. You might be Mother Teresa, but "Just don't take that job. Problem solved," demonstrates willful ignorance. And then "Sheesh" implies people are stupid for even asking, encouraging willful ignorance generally. If that's in conflict with what you believe, well, maybe you should try writing something different next time.

Drama? You called me "willfully ignorant." That's an insult.

I'll note you haven't actually engaged me in conversation here, AT ALL.

All you've done is name-called, and then criticized me.

Can't you see how the combination of a secure net, PLUS a free market where you are free to not take a job, results in people having jobs that they want?

As in, "Problem solved."

The problem is not that there are jobs that you find degrading - the problem is there's no safety net, so people HAVE TO TAKE THOSE JOBS.

Or do you want ignore the actual topic, and just poke me with a stick, some more?

No, I said a comment was an example of the willful ignorance the previous poster was pointing out. You may or may not be personally ignorant; I couldn't know. But that comment ignored the actual reality. The reality here that people are not always free to not take jobs. It is something the HN glibertarian contingent continually ignores, which is precisely the point bendoernberg when you jumped in. The problem is not solved until it is actually solved, not just because it might be solved in some imaginary world you are partial to.

Engagement in conversation is not something you are entitled to. It is earned. You seem to think you're entitled to make facile comments and then not have those comments challenged. And when they are, you turn it into personal drama apparently so that you don't have to face dealing with what you've actually said. I have no idea why you think that makes you an appealing person to have a conversation with.

> And when they are, you turn it into personal drama apparently so that you don't have to face dealing with what you've actually said.

That was me explaining the background behind my reasoning. Including personal anecdotes. Personal anecdotes are emotional, and you call it drama instead.

You still haven't engaged the topic, other than to say that my proposed solution is "some imaginary world."

Yes, PROPOSED solutions are "imaginary worlds" until you act on them. That's how that works.

I get that you didn't like my first comment, and I agree I didn't explain my entire world-view well in 140 characters.

When I tried to go deeper into my world-view, I was met with nothing but insults and meta-discussion. I'm not interested in either.

Yes, informal 'working for gold' has happened in quite a few MMOs where the grind is required to play.

However, many MMOs (Eve excluded) usually ban or restrict selling gold for USD.

mTurk and the up coming gig economy are legal ways to extract money right now, as a IT1099

If my wife, desperate to calm our crying daughter, texts Magic that she needs Similac Advance, a gallon of purified water, and a CLEANED set of Tommee Tippee bottles at 3 AM, and Magic is able to fulfill that need in short order... that's a MASSIVE win for everyone.

Honestly, if you had to get those three things at 3 AM, how much time and effort would it take you? Add a screaming child to the equation.

Anything that makes it easier for a consumer to get what they need, when they need it, if they are willing to pay the price, makes the world a better place. Especially if there's competition for that service.

You would seriously trust some random person to clean baby bottles for you? Seriously? What the hell.

If I had to get those things at 3AM - I don't know where you live, but for me (Out in the country), it's a 10 minute journey to a 24 hour supermarket, then 10 minutes back. The child would likely nap in the car.

It's extremely hard to not be sarcastic when I respond to you, so I'm not going to try:

You're right, all problems anyone ever has are solved by the Walmart 10 minutes away.

I retract my assertion that sometimes consumers are willing to spend money for convenience.

VikingCoder,

Have you actually used Magic? I'm a reporter for a new startup Tech.pro and am writing a story about Magic. Looking for users. Please let me know! Thanks!

> How is texting a pizza order to Magic, who then text it to a pizza company (Introducing a middle man) making the world a better place?

In the old days we used to call this a personal assistant. Now an Uber for personal assistants is something that would be really useful because I sure as hell don't have the money or the need for a full time assistant.

Although I have considered hiring somebody on a retainer basis to just be available for a few hours of menial tasks a few times a week or month.

I spent the weekend with a bunch of venture partners at a firm's off site and Magic came up a few times in conversation: not ''is it a killer idea?'' (of course, if it works) but ''can it scale?''.

Some business models simply don't scale until some amorphous inflection point in tech/attitudes/etc hits, no matter how much we want them to.

There's a healthy argument to make for raising and burning a bunch of money to aggregate users together in anticipation of the market shortly hitting that scaling inflection point, but it's still a big gamble (albeit one I think Magic and a handful of competitors will all take).

And then ultimately if it can scale, I think Amex and Visa/MC buy up competitors and make it a loss leader/free service attached to their card services.

I predict a lot of new SMS services headed our way. e.g. If I'm EXP on American Airlines, why don't they have a concierge # for me to text with? Why doesn't Seamless have a # for food delivery? etc.

I don't think there will be "a lot of new SMS services headed our way." The real value to the user for Magic is that you can use it for everything. Pizza one day, flight reservations the next. You don't need to google multiple numbers for things.

And if there were multiple SMS services for pizza ordering or flight reservations or whatever, then Magic would just subcontract out to those smaller services, and people would still just use Magic.

Magic isn't going to exist in a year, so that's a non-premise.

They're going to drown and the temporary hype will go away (needed to support the volume, which will fall out from under their service just about the time they're trying to raise serious capital), long before they can scale up and deliver on the premise.

Someone else will make a lot of money off of a service like this, but it is not going to be Magic.

Why is this service not sustainable within a year? Seems like a totally valid business to me.

edit: Next year, one of us is going to be laughing.

Keep in mind that sometimes the less you do, the better you do it. "Doing everything" sounds great but often just means the execution of various "things" suffers. Whereas Seamless for example just focuses on food and can no doubt provide better service there.

The term "SMS Services" reminds me of the archaic term "CD-ROM Industry", which was so popular before that "industry" was blindsided by the Internet. Fetishizing the medium itself, without taking a step back and asking "what's the actual product, and the best way to deliver it?" Why SMS and not Siri?

"Users love CD-ROM - it is user friendly." -- http://forge.fh-potsdam.de/~IFLA/INSPEL/94-3laan.pdf

In retrospect, that line sounds like Lucille Ball describing Vitameatavegemin: "It's so tasty, too! Just like candy." -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOLpeKwWGI

Magic is chatroulette. A bizarre, temporary amusement. It acquires your curiosity, it gets media buzz because of the premise (which can't be delivered on), but the foundation under it and the 'company' behind it is sand.

To pull off Magic, realistically, will require extraordinary resources and execution. Magic will flame out long before they can manage to acquire such.

A company like Amazon however, might just attempt a variation of it. For Amazon it can be another AWS service: ordering things as a web service. Amazon sources contractor labor, said labor gets reviewed / rated. It's a form of mechanical turk.

So how are you saving the world or does it bother you that other people are trying to make a difference? This tone towards startups and founders, I get it, but in the anonymous internet I have to wonder, who are these people and what are they doing that they think gives them a superior moral position. Or is it just that the other person has supposedly taken a superior moral position so you can argue however you want?

I'm not the one claiming to be saving the world. A lot of startups do seem to genuinely believe that what they are working on will save humanity (Or they'll sell the crappy website for billions and spend the money solving world hunger or something).

You should watch "Sillicon Valley" if you haven't already. I'm pretty sure they took a lot of it straight from YCombinator. And it's hilarious. "Magic" would fit right in on there, as it's comedy gold.

It's the little things. It allows you to focus on whatever you think is more important, while someone specialized in the task can do it maybe more efficiently than you can.

It's the good ol' fashioned trade of money for time, and trading is what makes an economy work.

You know who's specialised in taking pizza orders and delivering them? Pizza delivery companies!

Arguably not as optimized as Magic, strangely.

Call your pizza company and see how much effort it takes you to order a pizza to your house. They don't know your card number, your address, etc.

Compare with magic: "I want a large pepperoni pizza". Confirm the price, you're done. About 20 seconds of time involved.

Assuming your time is worth, I don't know, $20/hour or more, this seems to be worth the money directly--not even accounting for less cognitive load, loss of focus, daily happiness, whatever.

The pizza company sucks at taking your pizza order. Magic doesn't suck at it.

BS. How does Magic magically know my address or payment details?

In any event, I usually order pizza online, and it takes a couple of clicks. Even on the phone it's less than a minute.

Do you really consider your time so important that you refuse to even spend one minute on the phone talking to another human being to order a pizza?

No, but I understand that there's plenty of people who do.

FWIW it's more like 5-10 minutes every time I've ever ordered pizza (admittedly not often, I'm sure my pizza skills could improve, if I worked on them. I don't want to.)

Magic doesn't magically know your address/payment, of course, but it remembers it in the future. For every service, including new ones. I'm sure you actually knew that already. Point is it's one-time, ever.

My Domino's Pizza online account remembers both my address and my last/favorite orders. (I could even let it remember my card number, but I don't.) Ordering pizza consists of visiting the website, selecting "Yep, that same thing again", and following through the order process.

Granted, Magic has that for all transactions, but pizza can already be pretty convenient.

I'm not wholeheartedly disagreeing, but there's so much more to consider:

1) You're not at home. 2) You don't always order Dominos. 3) You don't even know what's available for delivery (I'm in a less urban area than most--Pizza Hut just started delivering in the last 12 months, and doesn't deliver to the whole city)

Essentially, when things get complex, Magic's cognitive load hardly changes at all. If it's a matter of routine (same pizza, same company, same house), your way is probably worth saving the money they charge.

Anyway, my pizza place has none of that. Including "online account," my pizza guy would have a good laugh at that.

In my city, restaurants are typically very loud and staffed by someone who does not speak any of the languages that I do. There are ~ ten million people in my city with this problem, so Magic/Seamless/whatever is valuable because it prevents me from shouting, straining to hear, and repeating myself four times, only to find later that the order is wrong because I have no meaningful checksum to insure correctness.

I find it a little odd that the canonical use case for Magic in these examples seems to be ordering your favorite dish to your home. I would agree with you, the complexity/cognitive load of this is low and with e.g. Seamless you get more control over the order and timeframe for little to no extra overhead.

But I could see a huge value in having someone make these decisions for you when it's something that's far outside of your normal routine. The last time I went skiing for example, we landed in the small ski town at night and needed to get dinner, we ended up calling around to 4 different places and making a bunch of arbitrary decisions and still had no idea if the food would even be good. Someone else (or eventually software) could have done that just as effectively and it would have saved us a lot of stress, in that scenario it really would feel like magic.

From your post: "The pizza company sucks at taking your pizza order. Magic doesn't suck at it."

From the article: "I’ve never once actually gotten what I wanted from Magic."

Sure, rephrase to;

"The pizza company's UI for ordering a pizza is far inferior to Magic's."

Whether they get the product delivered or not is most important, of course, but not really what I was talking about.

If they can scale, it won't be an issue, by definition.

That's highly debatable.

One of the UI's is a piece of software. The other is an English speaking human required to be quick and accurate.

Last I checked the slogan wasn't "manually entered orders done by on-demand employees are eating the world"

>The pizza company sucks at taking your pizza order. Magic doesn't suck at it.

My regular pizza company is completely painless to order from, both on the phone or online. They know my address, don't need my credit card number because I pay via credit card at the door, and they even have my order history. This is 2015. Maybe you need a new pizza company?

FWIW my very favorite pizza company is a local place in my city that doesn't deliver. It probably goes without saying they also don't have a website, any way to store card data, etc. His register is a cashbox.

I have every expectation that Magic would handle that order for me, though. Probably slowly, if the article is any indication, but I'm assuming they'll get better.

I wasn't really talking about my local shop, though, so point taken. It'd be pretty enjoyable to get "hey mr. mod!" and I say "hey, give me what i got last time, please." and hang up.

I don't want to bother with paying at the door, but I'd tough it out, I guess.

I imagine I am not alone in wanting a pretty specific pizza order (the restaurant, the toppings, the crust, etc.), which greatly diminishes the value proposition of saving time.

"Okay, google. Send a text message to magic I'd like a hand-tossed pizza, supreme but without olives, with butter and marinara sauce on the side, and a 2 liter of coke."

I mean, you're going to have to tell someone the specifics of your order. It's all the rest of the details where you're saving time.

The major companies (Papa John's, Dominos, Pizza Hut) are exceptional at it. I've used all of their websites in the past year and have no complaints.

Local pizza delivery companies vary more widely.

If the Pizza company is doing it right, they do have my address and payment info just from the number that pops up on callerID.

There is some pain points (god I hate myself right now) that magic could solve, but ordering food isn't one of them.

Grubhub or seamless is just easier. It takes longer to tell someone your order correctly that to just to it yourself.

I also do wonder if a pay per use secretary will actually work. My secretary knows me so she can better make choices. Someone with just a chat log has a harder go of it.

What it demonstrates to me is that online pizza ordering systems are too difficult to use. I know what I want and don't want to be asked a million questions or fill out endless forms. Magic might not be a good service, but lessons can be learned from it.

Hey lots of people use administrative assistants, for good reason. Days have 24 hours; somebody else to help you save minutes or hours has good marginal value. Doesn't matter what they're doing, just so you don't have to do it.

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