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Comment by Cshelton | Hacker News Reader

Private residences do not equal Hotels. If I don't want to be friends with minorities, I can choose not to be. If I do not want minorities staying in my private residence, I can refuse them staying there.

Off topic...at what point do we stop calling them "minorities" when they are the majority in many regions??

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Thing is, it stopped being a "private residence" when it became a business of hospitality. Despite what Airbnb will claim, Airbnb's clients are absolutely operating as a hotel and should be governed as such (which has the nasty side effect of probably killing the business).

The second they start having to obey zoning regulations, building codes, taxation & insurance the way hotels do, their valuation drops precipitously.

That's an argument you can make (except for the part about calling your publicly advertised commercial hotel a "private residence"), but I hope you don't also say "racism is past in America, everyone had equal opportunity now", because that would be logically inconsistent.

> If I do not want minorities staying in my private residence, I can refuse them staying there.

If they are your guests. Not if they are your customers.

> Off topic...at what point do we stop calling them "minorities" when they are the majority in many regions??

We stop calling them minorities when they are no longer so heavily outnumbered by the dominant ethnic group.

So Airbnb wants to disrupt hotels. Assuming they successfully disrupt them, does that mean that non-white, non-heterosexual, non-cisgender groups will no longer be afforded the same guarantees that other private businesses must abide by?

It wouldn't take a particularly imaginative plaintiff's attorney to come up with a strong argument that Airbnb itself is culpable for enabling discriminatory behavior. AirBnB would have deep pockets, which makes them a juicy plaintiff's lawyer target, and they'd likely end up settling to include a bunch of protections for minorities in their business practices with the people who own the rental units.

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