Most evil business plan of the decade?

[dsrtao]

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001196.html

Summary: Swoopo is probably an illegal gambling site.

Comments

[woodardp.livejournal.com]

That is pure evil. But I don't think it is illegal, since it uses a deterministic model that only relies on a well known human psychological foible. Well, the "BidButler" part may be illegal.

Although watching people throw their money away on stuff is pure schadenfreude...

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Maybe. The core concept is essentially a raffle, albeit a raffle with a ridiculously extortionate overhead. Are raffles illegal at the federal level? I didn't think so, but I haven't looked into it.

Granted, the cash auctions *are* probably illegal, but it sounds like they're a sideline to the main raffle idea.

Really, I don't see anything terribly wrong with the site that legalization and market forces wouldn't take care of. Make sure this is legal, and what you have is essentially a commodity-grade trading site. It would be ridiculously easy for someone to come along, undercut them by 90%, and steal all their business.

(And really, if you cut the overhead down to decent levels, I do think the fundamental idea is perfectly reasonable. This is a site that richly deserves not to be cracked down on, but competed out of existence...)