Comment by jbooth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbooth | Hacker News Reader

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Let's straighten this out -- I can't stand when people start complaining about "government". It's like complaining about "private enterprise" or "computers" -- yeah everything sucks sometimes but you need to be specific.

Here, we have 2 reasons that Paterson and the New York State Assembly/Senate got involved:

1) There is a legitimate public health concern with running unlicensed hotels -- subletting your 2 bedroom for a couple months is one thing, renting places in order to run a business out of them while circumventing health regs that are there for good reason is something entirely different. They were seeing a shift to the latter.

2) Simultaneously, hotels have money, have lobbyists, didn't like this and had a great argument to make with public health. The senator in question can keep the donations flowing while all the while claiming he's only concerned about the public welfare.

So, some mixture of that is what happened. Notice how none of it involved Glenn Beck's nightmare socialist conspiring to reduce "freedom" and expand "government" in order to, you know, piss off Glenn Beck or whatever motivates all of those socialists. When you unpack political reality, it turns out to be a lot less about "government vs private sector" and a lot more a combination of who has the money (usually one aspect of the private sector).

Would you support a ban on couchsurfing? Maybe you'd be deterred by our right to peaceably assemble. Is paying for access really so different?

Edit: as noted below, the implied question is: what "legimate health concerns" exist for short-term renting but not couchsurfing?

Of course not, that's different from running an unlicensed hotel. I'm saying we wound up with a law that could apply to both because some people were running unlicensed hotels and other people with money and lobbyists stood to lose money. Either by itself might not have been big enough for a law change, both together are.

I thought it would be instructive for people who talk about "government" as if just putting the word big in front of it solves the issue, and the solution is cut taxes for rich people. None of that has anything to do with this. This is a concrete policy change in a specific area.

You're not addressing my question: What "legitimate public health concerns" are different for couchsurfing vs a person renting out their apt while on holiday?

You need to un-ask your question. I already stated my opinion on renting out an apt on holiday, in the comment you originally responded to, and it's totally irrelevant to the point I'm making about how legislation happens as well as the larger point about people running a hotel out of their apartment.

There actually is a difference (although I'm not taking sides in that debate):

If you allow people to not be present at all, then some will turn this into a business and operate a real hotel room, 365 days a year. Operated like a cheap hotel. I can see why the government may want to regulate that.

An easy way to distinguish the above situation from legitimate friends staying over, is to ask for the owner to be present. Or couchsurfing. That tends to make it a more casual and better controlled environment. I can understand why the government may want to stay out of this.

My impression is that the real criteria should be how much the room is rented: if you have guests 300 days a year, you should be regulated. If it's 10 days, leave me alone. The problem is that it's probably hard to define, and may impose its own set of requirements (such as, everyone would have to keep a registry of all visitors, just to prove that they don't fall into the hotel category).

OK right now I have a little trouble taking your position seriously because you have seriously misinterpreted the Constitution. The full quote that you were looking for would be: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

What that doesn't mean is freedom to gather with a bunch of friends where and whenever you want. What it does mean is the legal right to stage peaceful protests or gather in public (with reasonable restrictions).

If needed I can run over to the library and grab you a list of cases on that, but I think you'll have trouble finding any for "couchsurfing."

What distinguishes "peaceable assembly" from meeting with a bunch of your friends? Some of the most important assemblies were antislavery meetings in barns, where meeting in public might mean suicide - does it say "peaceably assemble in public"? The prohibition is against government interference in all "peaceable assemblies" which is to say, all peaceful meetings. There are limitations, of course (eg I generally can't assemble in the street), but what reasonable restrictions intrude into the home? You do your name-sake disservice.

ad absurdum, meet slippery slope.

I don't think this is a totally absurdly black and white case, it's no oppressive regime rearing its ugly head. Both sides have ulterior motives (AirBnB and the established hotels), but their arguments aren't totally without merit. And one thing that people keep forgetting, is that this law isn't breaking new grounds, both renting and hotels are pretty heavily regulated, mostly for a good reason. Yes, for the hard-core magical hand of the market libertarians this is another nail in the coffin, but I bet that a lot of people that get too angry in this discussion don't have problems with laws against arbitrary landlord decisions or hotel health and emergency codes.

Let's keep this reasonable…

"both renting and hotels are pretty heavily regulated, mostly for a good reason."

Says who and what are those reasons? I suspect the reasons are: old people got scared and stakeholders saw an opportunity.

Luckily the Internet is mostly protected from scared old people and powerful stakeholders.

Maybe in another decade when we're all older we will be willing to give up the freedoms we once enjoyed when the Internet was still young. And it will be for "mostly good reasons."

Wow, an "old people" conspiracy. Haven't heard that since my high school days. Trust no one over 30…

Remember the old silent movies, where the evil, mustachioed landlord was one the most popular villainous archetypes? That wasn't without reason. People looking for a roof over their heads often aren't in a good bargaining position, so often you could make them sign almost any contract. There are quite a few federal and local laws that limit what's possible in all these cases, so that your landlord e.g. can't evict you all willy-nilly. Rent control is also rather common.

Same goes for hotels, especially when it comes to security (emergency exits, maximum occupancy etc.).

Whether every single law (including this new once) make sense is another question, but my point is that this isn't something completely new, were all of a sudden the octogenarians ruling the world decided to come down on the poor cyber-startups.

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