OK — This fellow on CNET news takes umbrage with the Parking Auction scenario. Fair enough, everyone is entitled. However the most cogent argument is made by the writers mother.
“It’ll never work. No New Yorker is going to sit in his car waiting for someone to be interested in his parking spot so he can make $5. They’re in too much of a hurry.”
The author gives his idea of an alternative:
So I propose a totally free system that pools data. Instead of making money, you get rewarded for putting parking information into the system with, get this, credits for information about actual parking spots. The motivation to put spot data into the system would be clear: Parking in, parking out. You could even limit information for low contributors. More importantly, users could be rewarded for putting spots into the system even if there were occasionally no “buyers” for their specific spots. (Verifying the accuracy of their data is a problem I haven’t solved.)
