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D_Malik comments on Open thread, Feb. 23 - Mar. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: MrMind 23 February 2015 08:01AM

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Comment author: D_Malik 23 February 2015 11:29:20PM *  5 points [-]

I've recently seen several unconventional business models proposed. For instance:

  • Robin Hanson proposed "egg futures": a business could buy eggs from fertile women and freeze them, betting that in the future the donors would become infertile and buy their eggs back at higher prices.
  • There have been proposals that people could sell "interrupt rights", so that advertisers could pay to advertise to them, at a rate set by each person according to their own valuation of their time.
  • The startup MonkeyParking used to allow users to buy and sell public parking spaces, taking advantage of the fact that parking spaces' value is greater than their price.

Has anyone made a compendium of these sorts of unconventional business models?

Edit: I'm guessing the downvoter found something offensive. I'm not saying these are good business models (though I do think they're all ethical), only that I'd like more output from the sorts of mental algorithms that generated them.

Comment author: Lumifer 24 February 2015 03:56:40AM 0 points [-]

Has anyone made a compendium of these sorts of unconventional business models?

Yes, successful unconventional business models are called startups which made it, and unsuccessful unconventional business models are called startups which failed.