Who Do You Trust? | Hacker News Reader

Who Do You Trust?

bhorowitz.com

142 pointsjordanmessina99 comments

This is a somewhat random note on the subject, but after reading one of the threads yesterday on Stripe, I found myself reading through their list of prohibited businesses/services (it's an interesting read if you're curious about high-fraud/sketchy business models).

And sure enough:

54) human hair, fake hair or hair-extensions

which says a lot about the industry.

(Note in looking this up just now, I found its only in the UK prohibited businesses, not the US list, which is also somewhat interesting)

That might be due to restrictions on things regular companies/people can post in the UK. I used to work for $big_parcel_company and the list of things you weren't allowed to send was... interesting. Some made sense (bodily fluids for instance) some just seemed like old hangups (which possibly accounts for the hair in this case).

UK: I ran into the thing about batteries when sending a phone back to supplier not so long ago. Strange, I had to show the Post Office counter lady the original packaging that had space for the battery cut out of the foam. After some discussion, I was allowed to send the phone back but with the battery in the phone.

I don't think restrictions on mailing batteries is that strange. Lithium-ion batteries can fail pretty spectacularly when damaged [0].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUFxlf4fXjo

The ability to weaponize a failure-at-will is somewhat documented by neo-anarchist cookbooks.

I've posted batteries plenty of times, you just need to add a warning label to the outside of the packagem

Hair is a fairly dangerous product; Lice, fleas, ticks, and other nasties that can spread disease like to nest in it. It's technically a body part, and I only say technically for the sake of argument; It is a body part. Most people are grossed out by fingernail clippings, which are pretty much the same thing (Primarily keratin).

Hair (and probably fingernails, were there a market for them) is relatively easy to clean compared to other body parts, but it is still a potential biohazard. Having regulations and restrictions around it makes sense - And I'm a die-hard libertarian saying this.

Presumably animal fur isn't prohibited. You can catch nasty things from fur and hides, and some tanning processes are nasty, too.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those parasites only to survive on live hair, because of the heat provided by the head the shelter provided by the hair?

What a totally bizarre posting. Capitalism is the best system except for these fundamental facts about how f'ed up it is?

And on a post about the craziness and bad experience in a wasteful business area that shouldn't exist? The entire concept of African American women buying Indian hair is just a continuing piece of systematic racism taken to its fullest by the victims themselves. This entire system from the hairdressers lacking capital for inventory to the women buying the hair is all disgusting waste.

The whole "this garbage (capitalism like this) is the best possible option" is pathetic learned helplessness.

This comment is interesting to me because as much as I try, I have absolutely no idea who you are mad at in this scenario.

Generally "everyone" is the correct answer for these sorts of baseless rants.

systems ;)

it is an overly hostile comment imho, but i can sympathize.

Just pretend that (s)he thought that (s)he was in /r/economics or /r/basicincome and it makes a lot more sense.

That's an interesting reply. Just because a situation is f'ed up doesn't necessarily mean there's a clear evil entity responsible. To push it to that would be scapegoating.

We can find a source for this particular topic though: the long disgraceful history of racism that leads people to think that Indian hair (being straight like lots of European hair) is more beautiful than curly African hair.

There are so many problems, socially, economically, etc. with this situation; and I'm annoyed at anyone who describes the situation as something other than messed up. It's messed up that many black women think their natural hair isn't attractive enough; it's messed up that many black men think black women's natural hair isn't attractive enough; it's messed up that capitalists figure out how to continue promoting those views and profiting off of this; it's messed up that there's still enough economic inequity that black hairstylists work on tight margins and credit… and it's messed up that the jerks who wrote this article are brainwashed into thinking this sort of capitalism is the best economic system we could ever have. It's also messed up that they think it's reasonable to publish something that says effectively "X is the best we can have, except that it is horrible" without any sense of irony or other nuance.

Couldn't agree more. That random sentence thrown in: "Capitalism is the best system in the world," left my mouth hanging open with it's total lack of justification.

Then it goes on to say that his peers makes too much money and gosh, that must be frustrating for the poor hairdressers and that's just how it goes in this, the best of all worlds. But now this app will change that quite a bit for, isn't it great that I'm investing?!

That's the impression I got from it too. Ben Horowitz should probably run his blog posts through a PR agency. He has enough money for it, I'm sure.

In the Orthodox Jewish world, many women wear sheitels, essentially wigs sourced from human hair. The entire buying experience is very different from what Ben describes in his blog. The women who sell the sheitels provide the whole experience, from picking out the hair type/color/length, etc, to making sure it fits well and that the customer is satisfied. Granted this is a much smaller and niche market, and the products (sheitels) themselves can easily sell for $1,000-$2,000+. (source, my wife regularly wears a Sheitel in accordance with Halacha).

God: I thought I told you to cover your hair!

Woman: Ha! These are not my hair. I covered my hair with someone else's hair. So technically, I'm in the clear.

God: Wow! Totally did not see that loophole.

Welcome to Orthodox Judaism.

See also: "selling" Chametz during Passover.

Maybe Jewish women started being accused of 'making a political statement' and being harrassed in the street because they covered their hair, so they had to make a compromise.

Is that like when Enron started being accused of inflated revenues and 'cooking the books' ... they also had to find a compromise and shred away the evidence! What type of non sensical argument is this?

A good starting point for this article is the movie "Good Hair" by Chris Rock. But rest assured, there is already a lot consolidation that already happened for Temple Hair in India. The raw material for this is, faith of Hindus (Hindu Women to be specific - since they have the long hair), that giving away hair as a form of surrender to God. Any guess, how long that will last?

edit: changed movie name [Bad Hair]

> Any guess, how long that will last?

Maybe once India becomes a developed country and quality of life will increase for ordinary Indians then they will stop trying to please god.

Sounds like vc money has found another industry to come into and kill thousands of mom and pop businesses. As this process continues, massive investments to take over every industry by using efficiencies of scale, will there be any room left for the lower class entrepreneurs?

except for the fact that one-to-one face-to-face customer service does not scale. So if a key value proposition of your mom and pop biz is such customer service, then I'd say you're fairly safe for the near/medium term.

Only in markets that are still meaningfully segmented by geography.

Sounds like they disrupted a terribly inefficient market to the end benefit of ordinary consumers who get a better product - market dynamics in action.

Why are mom and pop businesses better than those who buy or sell/cut hair? Shame on you for objectively deciding one group of people is better than another.

Really? "Shame on you"?

Personal attacks are not allowed on HN. This comment would be fine with just the first sentence.

I bought a wig for Comic Con last year[0], and it was an interesting experience. The local shop carries 3 grades, with an option to spend even more.

The entry level is polyester, with colors not normally found in nature. The mid-grade polyester (what I got) normally sells in the $180-230 range. Natural hair starts at $400, and obviously looks the most realistic.

Most of the hair is sourced from outside the US, from India and Asia. So the colors are usually very dark. They will bleach it to produce lighter shades, but if you need/want true Blonde, you'll have to buy either a bleached darker shade and hope for a good match, or spend significantly more for northern-European sourced hair.

Hair length is an issue - waiting for your hair to grow long before selling it obviously takes a while, so it sells for a premium.

And now I know a lot more than I ever thought I would about aftermarket hair supply. :)

[0] I went as Lucius Malfoy (Draco Malfoy's father) from Harry Potter: http://nebula.wsimg.com/773ae27d6ab68c28500b6986588b0da2?Acc...

"Mayvenn will send you a check for your earned commissions every month. You can do anything you want with it – pay rent, pay for your car or buy those shoes you wanted!"

From Mayvenn's site. Does this seem insulting to anyone else?

Poor choice of words? Sure.

Insulting? Not really.

Insulting because they did their market research and have tailored the message to address the needs/wants of the target audience ... outrageous indeed. Next thing you know companies on the internet will start showing ads in webpages targeting what they think I could want/need. Being insulted here is really pointless.

Why, exactly? Some women really like shoes. If most African American hair stylists (their customers) really like shoes, is it insulting?

Also, shoes that simultaneously meet standards of professionalism for women and are comfortable enough to be worn by someone on their feet for 9 hours a day are expensive.

For example: Dasko, a brand commonly worn by nurses seem to be in the $120-$140 range. http://www.zappos.com/dansko-shoes/CK_XAVICuAPiAgIKAQ.zso

It's insulting because it addresses its target audience as though they are children, as if they don't know how money works.

To me the emphasis is simply an implication that their customers get pitched a lot of programs where the payout has strings attached. (A common tactic to exploit the poor- see the old "company store" days)

Simple example, the reward points I get on my credit card are not cash. They can be redeemed on my mortgage, but not on shoes.

A product that is trying to differentiate itself from such programs would certainly want to really emphasize that they are giving you cash.

In an initial reading it strongly implies Mayvenn thinks its customers don't know that checks can be redeemed for normal money. There is also a bit of a scale jump from "pay your rent, your car" to "your shoes". But I guess it is implied its $200 shoes.

Since this indeed seem like a pretty insulting way to address a business owner, maybe a more reasonable explanation is that Mayvenn earlier paid commissions in store credits and not actual money? An alternative would be that they pay in some sketchy way that can eventually be turned into normal money. Both alternatives would create a need to reassure prospective clients that they will indeed get real money at the end of the day.

If the hairdressers in the target market tend to have cash flow problems, it wouldn't be too surprising for them to not have bank accounts / be unaccustomed to handling checks. Even in America.

I think that your statement assumes that somebody that works in a beauty salon should want something 'better' than buying shoes. For a (most likely) low income woman, being able to afford something luxurious like beautiful shoes likely represents a significant accomplishment and would be very personally rewarding. This is good marketing copy, and probably does a better job of recruiting stylists than reading like a mutual fund prospectus.

Why complain about the supply chain if the problem that's being fixed is only the customer experience?

You have to start somewhere.

I noticed that too. I think it's the rhetorical hook but also the context. The supply chain is a pretty good story and makes an interesting story out of what would otherwise be "just" mobile e-commerce sites for hairdressers. Fair enough. Arguably, fixing the supply chain to make it more efficient may involve a series of dis-intermediation steps, of which this could be the first. Perhaps the hairdressers will go directly to India or China -- or perhaps Mayvenn will do that on their behalf (taking just a little bit for the effort). Guesses. All guesses.

What I'm wondering is if this model would work for other things besides hair, where the retail outlet is constrained on the ability to hold inventory. Maybe mechanics shops?

I know someone who runs an auto parts store -- their primary business is selling to mechanics. They have delivery trucks that are out all day dropping off parts to the local mechanics that called in saying "I need an alternator for a 99 Civic." So the auto parts store is effectively serving as the "warehouse" from which the shops buy their inventory as needed.

because the biggest retailer is at the head of the money chain and can potentially control the supply chain. see: walmart

It sets the context, perhaps? Remember, the problem they are solving is buying goods out of a murky supply chain (because the traditional market solution, hair shops retailing, is broken here) so the murkiness of said supply chain is relevant.

    I’m into distribution, I’m like Atlantic
    I got them mutherf**ers flying across the Atlantic

What is the meaning of this quote? I read the linked rapgenius which explains it but it seems pretty weak as an illustrative quote for the linked article.

It's referring to the supply chain of illegal drugs. Heroin comes in from SE asia, flown in to the US. Similar to the hair market before, it's a bad system, with no way to do quality control of the product.

More specifically, Rick Ross (aka Freeway Rick) was a notorious LA drug dealer in the 80s. Now he's selling hair:

http://www.lamag.com/features/freeway-rick-is-dreaming/

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/05/188908281/freew...

Don't forget that Gary Webb broke the story about the CIA running the drugs to Rick Ross and other inner city areas, and ended up committing suicide (or according to some being suicided.)

The British and Dutch started it with the opium wars and now America took a page from their book and does it too. This is the real issue behind the war on drugs. They create a black market and then own that market, makes for tons of money that's unaccountable to congress (eg perfect for black budget ops).

Opium production in Afghanistan was almost nil before we invaded, and now Afghan heroin is getting shipped straight to America and business is booming! Similar things happened in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

I hadn't connected the recent popularity of heroin with the decade-ago colonization of Afghanistan. But of course, that's the time it takes to setup mass cultivation, informal supply lines, domestic distribution networks, and finally, social popularity.

Gosh, this shit really does camouflage over human-imperceptible timescales.

The kind of entities that participate think in longer timescales than most, which is a key advantage for plausible deniability. Strategically effective, I'll give em that.

The Rick Ross attributed to this song is not the same person as Freeway Rick Ross.

That's right, but Rick Ross the rapper derived his name from Freeway Rick Ross: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/freeway-ricky-ross-...

It's not just a coincidence.

Was there actually an issue with the quality of the received hair?

My reading of the linked article was the issue with hair was a question of credit, in that stylists did not have the money, nor the credit to be able to hold inventory, and not that the hair itself was bad.

He seems to have executed well. Instead of Hairstylists maintaining the inventory, Mayvenn maintains the inventory and hair-stylist will only show samples to their clients. Mayvenn basically takes over from delivery to returns etc. It make the hair-saloon much safer because they do not hold expensive inventory which is a big problem.

Because of how fragmented the hair industry is. In this case, Mayvenn is not into piece meal distribution—they are the "Atlantic Records" of hair and are concerned with distribution. And then, because the hair comes from India, they are flying it over the Atlantic Ocean as well.

Those gangsta rap quotes are testimony to how much pisstaking one can avoid as a powerful man.

My rap-speak may be off but I believe this refers to the Recording Industry and thus a reference to Atlantic Records and not drugs as other commenters suggested.

it's both

One of my coworkers just pointed me to Chris Rock's documentary called "Good Hair" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-4qxz08So

Wow.

I think the previous documentary put out just prior to that is actually deeper and better, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Nappy_Roots:_A_Journey_Thro...

Marc Andreesen made a comment on a recent a16z podcast that they were interested in the challenges of global remittances. This seems like a related interest: How can we use technology to provide credit, transfer and remittance services to a user base that may be exclusively using mobile phones and/or in emerging markets with limited internet access? There are likely a number of industries where this pattern can be repeated.

This is a big thing in emerging markets—in some countries, even the people who don't have food, power, or water infrastructure have cheap Chinese smartphone and ubiquitous 3G/LTE data. In there market's in particular, there's a pending shift for small businesses to move away from cash and to electronic payments, which opens up a whole 'nother world in terms of relationships with financial institutions, access to credit, etc.

On the other side of that whole 'nother world is a blockchain waiting to replace all of those relationships.

Not really. The underlying currency—be it bitcoin, USD, yen, rand, or rupees—still requires lenders, payment systems, institutional agreements, and general technical enablement. At that point it's all 1s and 0s anyway.

Speaking of remittances and mobile, you can top up a Chinese mobile account from London. No idea how the fees are though.

“whom”

to this west coast usian ear, 'whom do you trust' sounds hopelessly antiquated and pedantic.

It sounds like proper English.

I agree with thee; thy position is sound.

OK, this isn't the most scientific thing, but 'who do you trust' brings up 400K results on Google, while 'whom do you trust' brings up 150K, and the first result is an article on exactly this topic(1).

So obviously what's "proper" or not depends on what dialect you're trying to conform to. I can believe that if you're part of that narrow, elite sliver that would naturally use 'whom do you trust', the "incorrect" use of "who" as the object of a sentence must seem garish, but to the rest of us, trust me, "whom do you trust" sounds ridiculous.

Live and let live?

(1) "Whom do you trust?" http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2012/04/grammar

I thought whom follows a preposition: To whom is the message addressed?

The mnemonic I got in school was that if you can answer with "him" then it should be "whom."

Who made this? He made this. Whom do you trust? I trust him.

This mnemonic is predicated on answering in complete proper sentences. I realize that in current colloquial English, "Who made this? Him." is certainly an exchange one might encounter.

The distinction is not whether a preposition is involved or not, it is whether the "who/whom" word is operating as an object ("whom") or a subject ("who"). That's why delinka's mnemonic also works.

In both "to whom is the message addressed" and "whom do you trust", "whom" is an object, not a subject.

All that being said, it is increasingly a common and acceptable practice to use "who" as both an object and a subject, so it's probably not worth losing too much sleep over.

The pronoun is in dative case, or even if objective case, the test works of "whom" because "I trust her/him" and not "I trust he/she".

Just FWIW, it is not in the dative case. The dative case is only for indirect objects (which follow pronouns), or direct objects specifically related to the act of giving. Trusting is not giving, and there is no prepositional phrase in this sentence, and so the pronoun is a direct object. But yes, it still passes the test for whether it's objective or subjective.

Blame Bo Diddley for educating an entire generation with the song, who do you love.

That song has had many covers but my favorite is a local band, The Woolies, that had a Billboard top 100 hit with it in 1966:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfgmaNPJXZo

Hey this is Neeharika from Sonar. We spoke with Taylor Wang, COO of Mayvenn yesterday and wanted to share a post on how Mayvenn's thinks about community and SMS: http://blog.sendsonar.com/2015/06/19/how-mayvenn-grew-its-co...

What the fuck is with motherfuckers misspelling words like "fuck" and "motherfucker"?

It's rude to misquote something. The rapper known as Rick Ross didn't say "mutherf ASTERISK ASTERISK ers", he said "motherfuckers". It's right there in the song if you hit play.

Why does he edit the text of the song but not the audio?

What the fuck is wrong with Americans thinking that some words are "bad" and should thus always be misspelled?

If they're bad, stop using them. If you're going to use them, spell them right. Spelling it "mutherf ASTERISK ASTERISK ers" doesn't keep my brain from thinking "fuck".

PS: HN's markdown doesn't let one escape an asterisk to get a literal asterisk.

I can't help but see parallels between Mayvenn and Uber. Will the next we hear about Mayvenn be its investments in lab-grown hair the way that Uber is heavily investing in driverless vehicles?

It also seems clumsy how they appear to mention that a venture capitalist can earn disproportionally more than a hair stylist and that they unfortunately can only improve that by a little amount. The truth is, of course, that they have mainly invested into Mayvenn because it's a $5B/year market and yet another gap between massively occurring human interactions into which you can squeeze a money-milking machine (cf. Facebook, AirBnB, Ebay …). I can't wait to see these services being distributed, open source and based on the blockchain.

How would you base holding inventory on the blockchain? This app just collapses a few layers of middlemen.

I believe that the last sentence of the parent post should be read as sarcasm.

I'm not sure I understand your argument that open-source or the blockchain adds significant value.

If you take the article at its word, the state of the art is a distributed collection of small-time suppliers offering goods for sale without refunds for installation by third-party integrators -- the consumer's stylist.

Mayvenn improves the distribution story by integrating the stylist into the supply chain while providing customer service and inventory at zero risk to the stylists who can't afford to carry inventory themselves.

Could you elaborate?

I was more generally speaking. In this case, I think some sort of regulation would be necessary to improve the situation.

Indian women sell hair to Chinese, who productizie it and sell to Koreans, who further refine it and eventually sell it African American women == worst experience? I think this sentence is soaked in prejudice.

Most global supply chains, some for super luxurious products have these three countries involved... I dont know how that automagically qualifies for a horrible experience

So, basically African-American owned beauty salons can't get credit even though they are clearly good for it since this business can happily carry out arbitrage against it.

Um, that's a pretty ringing indictment of capitalism, not an endorsement.

It's interesting that the yiddish word for expert is spelled similar to maven, which is also means expert in English.

The English word 'maven' has Yiddish origin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Yiddi...

It's interesting to me that they used a Yiddish word, in an industry that starts at India, travels thru China and Korea, and finally ends at Americans whose probability of being Jewish is low. It just seems like an odd choice from the available wordspace.

hairbitrage

Barbitrage

WhoM do you trust? Not "who" do you trust.

> A nurse, whose dedication to her craft saves lives and brings hope to the hopeless, will make a fraction of what a crappy banker, who brings misery to everyone she encounters, earns.

A part oft this problem is that the health system is also an economic system. It shouldn't be, but they're trying to make and save money in every aspect.

There are few things that I wish were more strictly regulated by the state. Health care, with health as the primary goal, is one of these things.

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