Yesterday, Kagro X speaking on Daily Kos Radio brought to my attention the homejoy.com app. This is, yet another, misapplication of software engineering talent towards something that was perfectly functional before someone decided to make an app for it.
Now, it should be said that I am not a fan of Uber. I find simply walking out of my house and flagging a cab is perfectly sufficient for the task at hand and see no reason to include Uber as a middleman. Nor do i see a need to include homejoy.com as a middleman between me and a maid. There is also the negative effect that this sort of independent contractor model of employment will have on working people trying to make a living. It seems to me Silicon Valley brains and money could be better applied to real problems rather than just finding ways to make money by screwing people who work for a living or own a small business.
Greg and David briefly discussed the ubering of war. That might be something worth considering. Why should the prosecution of war be done by government workers and not be left to the free market? Since President Obama has completely dismissed any fealty to the Constitutional declaring of war and Congress has dismissed the raising of the appropriate taxes to pay for it, starting war by fiat seems to be fairly efficient these days. Its fairly simple to start a war in 21st Century America. Since warmaking currently works just fine as is, obviously there needs to be an app. Silicon Valley brains and billionaires should get involved and find a way to make a gazillion dollars by not making a profit. Because why not?
Make an app that allows folks who have wars they want to fight register and describe what kind of war they want to fight and where. Then, allow folks who are gung ho to go to war register and sign up to go fight them. Of course, much like Uber and using your own car as a taxi, you have to bring your own guns and ammo. Then the folks who want to start wars can link up with folks who want to fight wars and Warber (im trademarking that so dont even think about it!) takes a 10-20% cut to software up the whole thing. We could eliminate the entire inefficient process of having the bloated bureaucratic Pentagon involved. No military pension or healthcare costs. No VA expenses. No endless meetings of the National Security Council. You could cut out the Federal government and insert a venture capitalist and a couple of bored software engineers.
There should always an app for everything.