It seems like I should be able to give a neighbor's kid a 20 to pick up some leaves without getting the government involved. It seems like I should be able to give a friend a dollar for running and grabbing me a coke without consulting minimum wage laws or local sales taxes. I should be able to lend my cousin some money without registering as a bank.
A business hiring leafblowers or messengers with a "no questions asked" policy, or even an individual loan shark, seems like the law should get involved.
The internet as a communication platform blurs these lines. It lowers the barriers between strangers and acquaintances and friends. It lets private individuals behave like businesses some of the time. It lets small transactions rapidly scale.
I don't think one set of intuitions is necessarily right or wrong. But I think these conflicting intuitions make some people libertarians towards businesses like airbnb and uber, and other people think those businesses are just profiting off of skirting regulations.
The real issue is that AirBNB also imposes these risks on communities (i.e., AirBNB's customers' neighbors) by exposing them to, in the worst case, criminal elements, but even in a normal case, temporary renters who lack incentive to follow social norms or respect communal property.
This doesn't mean that AirBNB's business can't work, but it does mean that AirBNB needs to work with regulators to find a solution acceptable to the communities in which it operates. Such a solution would most likely be a combination of technical solutions to minimize bad outcomes and perhaps a tax on AirBNB, the proceeds of which could compensate communities for the externality imposed by AirBNB.
The person renting to AirBNB is the one imposing the risks. If communities are being put at risk it is by the willful actions of their own members.
>...AirBNB needs to work with regulators...
Why involve more parties than needed? How do communities currently deal with "bad apples?"
If we assume the community is functionally equipped to handle permanent residents who are undesirable, but not temporary ones, why not just apply the same rules to temporary residents? The permanent resident would bear responsibility for their guest(s). This would keep the solution in the same domain as the problem, the community.
As to your second question, this is a public policy issue, and there will be a policy response whether AirBNB likes it or not. I think it would be smart for AirBNB to engage in the policy conversation.
the laws are already there on How do communities currently deal with "bad apples?"
Doesn't mean its the "right answer", but ...
I don't see there being a solution at all; hotels are zoned differently than residential for a reason.
The fact that AirBNB managed to popularize "breaking zoning laws ON THE WEB" doesn't mean that the zoning laws need to change.
I think the bigger issue is if the externalities imposed by normal usage are so high that, when properly internalized, AirBNB no longer presents a compelling value proposition in the majority of cases. This is certainly possible.
From AirBNB's perspective, perhaps they just fight the internalization as hard as possible. There are businesses with much costlier externalities, such as energy companies, that are actually subsidized and not taxed. In the AirBNB case, however, they may have a tougher fight as the harm, while lower in aggregate, is also less diffuse.
It seems to me there are reasonable community reasons to have constraints and there are reasonable reasons to allow owners and travelers to benefit by coming to terms. It seems to me then there are reasonable reasons to figure out sensible guidelines - even where no rules (or practically none) are in place today. Then laws and regulations (and building rules) can be changed to adapt to these new opportunities and risks.
AirBnB (understandably) wants more latitude than I think they should be given. But I also think it is an opportunity for benefit to society and I don't think just saying there are risks we shouldn't adapt is a great idea.
This seems like a more compelling point than the title topic.
In the beginning, Airbnb was for homeowners and renters to provide a spare bedroom to travelers. In that case, they're facilitating a private transaction between two individuals to exchange money for a place to crash. By the residents staying at the home for the duration of the guest's stay, it's hard to call that a sublet, and there's a very strong argument to be made that it's just a communications platform to link either side of a marketplace.
But the case of whole-home rentals gets murkier. I don't see how letting someone stay in your home while you're living somewhere else is anything but a sublet. And if it is a sublet, why should it not have to conform to the established rules for sublets?
I find it disappointing that the Airbnb team hasn't done much in the way of explaining this point. When they do address the legality of Airbnb, they almost always refer to the first case. It's understandable, as it's a much more easily defensible position. I'd be interested to hear someone from Airbnb directly address the possibility of their service being used to turn residential spaces into commercial spaces (in the form of hotels).
Its actually quite easy: you are renting out space in a unit you are renting from a landlord -- so its a sublet. That you are present is irrelevant to whether it is a sublet (it may, OTOH, be relevant to whether it is prohibited by law independent of lease conditions even aside from considering whether it is a sublet, but that's a different issue.)
I agree. If a large number of residential spaces start getting occupied for AirBnB usage, that makes the housing stock that much shorter. And that would actually increase price of housing in the city. As another commenter posted, it was harmless when people were letting travelers stay the night in their currently occupied homes, as that didn't decrease the housing stock. But when people start using residential properties as fully functioning motels, that's when we see society adversely affected.
And this is a far more logical argument than the Brothrel one as not everyone agrees how bad that is.
Which is certainly a political opinion that some people endorse, of course, but when you do that it's generally a contributing factor towards a housing shortage, like you see in places such as New York and San Francisco... go figure :b
I guess property rights don't mean anything anymore.
There are many things that would increase short term government revenue but which would be terrible public policy.
Investors in NYC given the choice of building hotels, office buildings, or residential properties are generally building residential properties. In fact a lot of the rezoning has been turning commercial space into residential space over the last 5-10 years. The market is clearly demanding residential space (specifically luxury units) first and foremost.
What used to be a standard of 25% has approached 45%+ in a very short amount of time in cities like NYC, San Fran, LA, and more. Wages have stagnated and tenants are doing everything they possibly can to afford to live in their city of choice. For politicians to go after AirBnB is to miss the underlying problem.
but for those skimming the comments or who missed the hyperlink:
http://nypost.com/2014/04/14/hookers-using-airbnb-to-use-apa...
Maybe the claim in the headline is right, probably the story is backed by real facts. That article though? That's really useless.
“It’s more discreet and much cheaper than The Waldorf,”
--> Apparently, this is from an interview. But, YMMV.
"Prostitution wasn't really at the top of our minds when we passed the 2010 law helping NYC enforce against illegal short-term rentals, but in hindsight it seems kind of obvious."
You have to admit, I think the enterprising minds here at HN also failed to foresee this.
I wonder if AirBnB internally had some risk assessment of this.
> Everyone knew it happened. Actually, the new management probably didn't, but wouldn't have done anything about it if they'd found out, apart from carefully forgetting that they'd known.
I think "potential illegal uses" is a pretty common argument against short-term rentals, and prostitution isn't exactly a non-obvious one. It's just generally a bit easier on the neighbors than, for example, crazy parties or drug houses, which are both commonly-touted (and valid) arguments against short-term rentals.
A prostitution ring is pretty low on the list of things that could go wrong.
Most likely it's that most of HN doesn't care what consenting adults do on their own time.
Weeeeeell…
This is a standard part of success: criminals hack the system. Much like AWS being used for bitcoin mining, and every cash-in-cash-out system being used for money laundering.
This is textbook 'slippery slope' fallacy. https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope You said that if we allow A to happen, then Z will eventually happen too, therefore A should not happen.
In this case, there is in fact an escalating progression of bad things happening in Airbnb rentals; in rough order:
* Criminal enterprises buying entire buildings and turning them into unlawful hotels
* Renters trashing Airbnb rentals
* Floating brothels
The leap from here to "gambling" doesn't sound too crazy; in fact, gambling seems more innocuous than a floating brothel.
If you believe that AirBnB WILL be used for prostitution, but WILL NOT be used for gambling or a drug operation, you should articulate a reason why you think there is a difference in kind that would prevent people from using AirBnB for those other purposes.
A small group of users act rational and in self-interest (by offering prostitution, illegal gambling etc.) and therefore make it worse for the other 'legitimate' users. In the long run, the 'illegal' users destroy AirBnB (by causing stricter laws etc.) and therefore destroy their own business.
Something being an informal fallacy doesn't mean that it can't be a component of a good argument (ie. correlation not implying causation doesn't mean there are no cases where something can be demonstrated to be causitive), it means that it is not an argument in and of itself.
This seems very well reasoned. I hope you're not implying that we can't make reasoned assumptions and take actions based off them.
Also there's actual law breaking going on here.
I love and use AirBnb but the lady has some great points.
There is enough evidence that shows that prostitution, drugs, and violent crime are inextricably linked.
Prostitutes are more likely to be victims of sexual assault, while being under the influence of drugs provided by their pimps, who may also use violence as a means to control the prostitutes, and as way to deal with Johns.
In addition to sex, drugs, and violence, prostitution has ties to human trafficking, child exploitation, and slavery, not to mention the health risks.
An active neighbour can easily be bringing some stranger they picked up at a bar twice each night; if that stranger pays afterwards then that doesn't change anything for me.
In this case, all there are pretty equivalently bad, and the quote was just other similar ways the rooms could be exploited.
All of the aforementioned activities are (a) unambiguously illegal, and (b) within the same class of illegality, in that they are all based off social norms of morality and thrive on the same drives of moral ambiguity.
There's definitely a continuum from "radical luddite" to "techno-utopian," and I think striking a balance between caution and optimism is the way to go.
I don't see why there's any particular link between how widely distributed the ownership of a company is, and whether the infrastructure it is building holds potential for abuse and should be considered a matter of vital public interest. For the record, I think (with low confidence) that this is not true of Google and wasn't at the time, I just think this point is irrelevant.
