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Comment by an_opabinia | Hacker News Reader

Of the last $5,000 I’ve spent on AirBnB, not a single dollar was spent on a legal host.

I didn't know this was a thing until my friend said he stayed in a guest room of a small country's embassy in SF that the host probably never had permission to rent out.

You haven't lived until you find out your host lied about the address so it wouldn't tip off their landlord, who forbid it in their lease

Had this very experience happen to me a few years back. Took a cab to the advertised address. Door locked. So I call the host and the host gives us a different address.

Catch a taxi to the other address and report it to Airbnb along with a request for cab refund (Airbnb just ignored the request). Host just started listing in a different address afterwards.

Uber and AirBnB have revealed that the Western World is far more lawless than we had imagined.

Who knew you could just 'start running cabs'.

Even city hall says 'no' ... they just keep going.

It's really bizarre.

Irrespective of whether or now we should allow AirBnB and Uber it's crazy that civic institutions seem to have no control.

If I was mayor and we decided 'no' on Uber I would be fining Uber millions and individual drivers a lot and ask regular cabs and cops to be on the lookout.

It's mind blowing how much tax revenue is being missed out on, and how much money is flying out of the country.

if you were mayor in a city like LA you wouldn't have the ability to do anything really unless you had the council on your side, some of whom are currently being charged by the FBI in a corruption probe. Chicago is even worse. Most city governments are completely hobbled by design, powerless, and corrupted.

The defining feature of a cab is that you can hail one down on the street. If you summon one through an app, it’s a car service, it a cab, and car services have never been subject to the same regulations as cabs.

The real reason mayors don’t crack down on Ubers is that their constituents love them and any mayor that tried to outright ban them would become very unpopular very quickly. Welcome to living in a democracy.

Airbnbs are somewhat more tenuous politically because the people who use them are from out of town and don’t vote in local elections.

This is not new. Meanwhile many of those same cities declare themselves sanctuaries and refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law.

The US has always been partly "wild west", for better or worse.

> Uber and AirBnB have revealed that the Western World is far more lawless than we had imagined.

What an extraordinary extrapolation.

The lawlessness of Uber and AirBnB is not extrapolated, it's real. Ergo, Western Cities are lawless.

City of Montreal has all sorts of rules against AirBnB and Uber and yet ... it still exists.

And in eastern cities, someone picks a pocket. So that illegality means an equal amount of lawlessness there as here, right? Because all lawbreaking is equal, right?

(You may have a point about montreal, could you post some links to the laws against uber and Abnb)

I think it is just Western democracy at work.

City Hall says 'no' and then they get a barrage of letters and emails demanding they don't hurt Uber or Airbnb as people love them. City Council doesn't want to have the deal with the fight, so they capitulate.

> If I was mayor and we decided 'no' on Uber I would be fining Uber millions and individual drivers a lot and ask regular cabs and cops to be on the lookout.

Are you prepared to deal with angry petitions and unhappy city councillors? Would you really be willing to put up the fight? Especially when there is virtually nobody in support of taxis and hotels?

" City Council doesn't want to have the deal with the fight, so they capitulate."

That is not what is happening.

What is happening is that they don't have the tools, wherewithal or leverage to implement their own policies.

They are operationally incapable.

If people hated Uber, they would find the tools and wherewithal pretty quickly.

> Uber and AirBnB have revealed that the Western World is far more lawless than we had imagined.

I think we discovered that around 2000 with Napster, Kazaa, etc.

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