Monkey In The Middle (Of My Parking Space): New Parking-Spot Auctioning App Banned In San Francisco

The new "sharing economy" sounds like a feel-good, community-building idea, but some elements of San Francisco have turned it into a very capitalistic marketing ploy. The new app MonkeyParking is designed to auction off soon-to-be-vacated parking spaces, which has given the wealthy a new societal edge but given middle-class communities a headache.

Claiming the app fosters a sense of community and "sharing", MonkeyParking is slated to park itself in New York, Rome, Seattle and Chicago soon.

The craziness of auctioning off publicly funded parking spaces is not lost to the sane media. Reporter Will Oremus of Slate notes, "I know this is Silicon Valley, where words have no meaning, but it takes a special brand of Ayn Rand–spouting nincompoop to try to pass off the unilateral privatization and scalping of public services as a new form of 'sharing.'"

Fortunately, citing a local statute that bans buying or selling of public parking spaces, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has issued a cease-and-desist letter to MonkeyParking. But will the monkey be on your neighborhood's back soon?

Too much Monkey business.