America has to get serious about efficiency if we are to have any hope of competing. That’s why I’m releasing on Monday a new smartphone app perfect for the digital sharing economy of the 21st Century: Hotbunk!
Why should your bed go unused for 2/3rds of each day? With my bed-sharing app Hotbunk!, you can rent out your bed for the 16 hours per day you don’t need it. It’s a futuristic digital marketplace for shift workers needing a mattress while you are at work or watching television.
Hotbunk! Version 1.0 offers three eight-hour shifts per day. Version 2.0 will offer four six-hour shifts: perfect for the more efficient America we're building with disruptive technology like Hotbunk!
So, the future of the American middle class is this?
ReplyDeleteBut that would destroy the entire basis of economic growth (aka house price inflation).
ReplyDeleteThis is an old concept, e.g. U-boat crews. Arrangements like this probably were common in factory towns too(?). Seems like a valid idea and not just a joke to me.
ReplyDeleteDid not RTFA, but I guess these folks have never heard of lice, fleas, or bedbugs?
ReplyDeleteClose: Breather.
ReplyDeleteBox and Cox is some kind of play from 1850s England about two guys sharing a bed.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_and_Cox
I suppose the newer, more hi-tech version (the commercial for Hotbunk)could be titled,
"Try Box and Cox, it rocks!!!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_and_Cox
ReplyDelete"Anonymous Dave Pinsen said...
ReplyDeleteClose: Breather."
Perfect app for enterprising prostitutes and their johns.
Yeah, that was my thought too. Seems inevitable.
DeleteBTW, if you contact the founder via Twitter, he'll give you a coupon for a free trial.
Easy Mark! - Lets users share information about who is willing to feed strangers. The perfect lifestyle-app for the 21st century Hobo-Economy.
ReplyDeleteBut does it have a Spanish language option?
ReplyDeleteWhoa! You're shifting my paradigm too much!
ReplyDeleteDon't Mexicans in LA already do this?
ReplyDeleteHot bunking is a great idea. Just ask anyone who has picked up scabies from a foreign hotel bed.
If you can't trim out superfluous vowels you'll never make it in this business Sailer
ReplyDeleteI want one that tracks how many beans remain in the pantry and tells employers when to replenish them. "Hotbunk! now with Trough Alert (tm)"
ReplyDeleteAs Marc Andreessen keeps saying: the best ideas are ideas that sound stupid at first, because if not stupid somebody else is already working on them.
ReplyDeleteBetter get programming Steve!
I see the way toward riches.
ReplyDeleteI could rent out my bed 24 hours a day. It's a good bed - a California King with a new $2,000 mattress. I built it myself out of solid oak.
But I have slept in a chair ever since I fell off that cliff two years ago.
Do I really need Hotbunk? Can't I just advertise it's availability in Craigslist?
Patrick Boyle
But that would destroy the entire basis of economic growth (aka house price inflation).
ReplyDeleteNo it wouldn't. Remember price inflation is always relative to something. People who work in shifts and can only rent out beds for hours at a time can afford houses less than people with steady jobs and salaries and income. Thus the more such people, the more house price inflation there is relative to the average person.
Even better: beds on wheels:
ReplyDelete"‘Hook-Up Truck’ rolls out in Bay Area"
http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/05/01/hook-up-truck-rolls-out-in-bay-area/
"The Hook-Up Truck, a commercial box truck retrofitted for sex on the street, departs on its maiden voyage this weekend around the Bay Area.
The truck, described on the project’s website as “either participatory performance art, a safe and convenient place to get down while out on the town, or the end of civilization as we know it” will be cruising around Oakland Friday night before heading over to San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood at 10 p.m."
Members have to pay Hotbunk to advertise on the app website, and customers post reviews. Customers threaten members with bad reviews if they dont recieve 50%-off-discounts from posted prices. Hotbunk moves members' ads down to the bottom of the page where customers dont see them, and negative reviews of said members to the top of the review page, if those members dont buy enough Bunkpoints, a advertising/marketing option members weren't told about when they signed up. All in all, Hotbunk members can rent their bedroom out for $16 for per day ($1 per hour) but wind up paying Hotbunk $8 per day to do this. Blackmailing customers getting half price discounts by threatening negative reviews mean members make 4-6 bucks per day for availing their home to strangers.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, there is a new bathroom app that allows people to avoid those nasty gas station bathrooms invented by Hotbunk's pioneering entrepreneurs, and garage-storage-share coming next spring.
Bonus if it identifies which homes/apartments/condos/shacks keep large stores or beans and ramen noodles in the pantry.
ReplyDeleteAccording to some reports, whores and their johns are now using AirBNB for hookups. Think of AirBNB as a floating whorehouse for hookers.
ReplyDeleteGet a rich john? AirBNB him in Beverly Hills. Get a middle class john? AirBNB him in Baldwin Hills or Venice. Get a poor john? AirBNB him in Compton. Tailor your overhead to a client's ability to pay. American efficiency at its finest.
Version 3.0 (retail employee edition): You get a full 8 hours of sleep per 24 hours, but broken up into increments of at least 15 minutes to maximize efficiency and revenue. Your schedule will be as follows: Lights out at 8:00 p.m., up at 10:15, back in bed at 11:45, up at 1:00 a.m., back down at 3:30, up at 4:00, down at 7:00, up at 8:30, down at 11:00, up at 12:45 p.m., down at 3:00, up at 3:45. But you can buy extra time at another bunk a mile away.
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/Vuhec_llrGw?t=40s
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/2l8Y-0c1fvA?t=1m21s
IPO in june, with projected revenues of 2 million dollars in the first year and a market capitalization of 12 billion.
ReplyDeleteThere's a part in the Alan Moore/Eddie Campbell comic "From Hell" where one of the street entrepreneurs is abruptly awakened, after the property owner unties the rope which had been holding her and other vagrants from keeling forward off the bench where they'd slept (all had contributed a few pence or something for these indoor-rest accommodations). In the footnote Moore claims this practice yielded a Victorian expression, "I'm so tired I could sleep on a clothesline"
ReplyDeleteThis thing has "eight figure IPO " written all over it.
ReplyDeleteDo it the submarine way. Instead of hotracking, you could just have air matresses on top of the torpedo racks ...
ReplyDeleteSteve, come on, there are glaring inefficiencies in your implementation. How many people really need a whole bed to themselves? A full size or larger can easily accommodate two adults. Why let 50% of the bed go idle? Users should be able to reserve portions of a bed. They can pay per sq ft. Don't worry about bed hogs or rapists, users can review one another so they'll have an incentive be responsible bed mates.
ReplyDeleteDo you own stock in the company that makes Lysol?
ReplyDeleteFree enterprise at its finest!
ReplyDelete>to maximize efficiency and revenue. Your schedule will be as follows: Lights out at 8:00 p.m., up at 10:15, back in bed at 11:45, up at 1:00 a.m., back down at 3:30, up at 4:00, down at 7:00, up at 8:30, down at 11:00, up at 12:45 p.m., down at 3:00, up at 3:45.<
Get Tyler Cowan and Bryan Caplan to promote it with the slogan "the moral is the practical." "Ayn Rand" will applaud in her crypt.
This + legalized prostitute = ?
ReplyDelete"But that would destroy the entire basis of economic growth (aka house price inflation)." - not if we bring in 3 billion 3rd worlders.
ReplyDeleteThe city is a virtual Kibbutz with no orchards.
ReplyDeleteGilbert P
If Traitor McCain gets his way.
ReplyDelete