Comment by dmk23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dmk23 | Hacker News Reader

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This is a classic example of anti-competitive market fixing, masquerading as a "regulation to protect consumers" or somesuch.

There is no legitimate justification to infringe on a contract between a willing buyer and a willing seller, but to actually fight these crackdowns you have to spend lots of $$$ on local political campaigns in every municipality. Easier said than done. Unless that massive lobbying investment (or at least a publicity campaign, like SOPA boycotts) happen the entrenched interests win by default and lots of peer-to-peer transactions will move to gray/black market.

Prohibition always creates speakeasies and the organized crime to protect them.

EDIT: To address "devil advocates", yes, most regulation mandated and enforced by government is a terrible imposition. Self-regulation that preserves consumer choice is a much better idea. You want to pay extra $$$ for a better level of service / protection /etc? Make it an optional line item with explicit cost.

There is no legitimate justification to infringe on a contract between a willing buyer and a willing seller

Devils advocate: are food standards also a terrible imposition? The government insists on coming around to all the restaurants in the city and inspecting them to make sure that no-one will be poisoned or killed by the food they eat. How dare they stand in between a willing buyer and seller. Right? Right?

Food standards, restaurant inspections, building codes, health and safety codes... the list goes on. Are they all illegitimate attempts to stand between a willing buyer and seller?

If my friend grows tomatoes in her back yard, should I be prohibited and fined for eating one without it first being inspected?

Inspections are there because large institutions don't always take the care they should, and as a consumer I sure as hell want -somebody- to look into it. If it weren't a government institution then I'd expect some sort of company to do it, and any restaurant that hadn't gotten inspected I would avoid.

On the other hand I -don't- worry when I use Air-BnB, because it has reviews that signify quality, and because there's not much that can go wrong with sleeping on a couch.

It has little to do with the reasons for regulating food, and everything to do with the means. In order to keep me from buying soda, you have to forcibly come between the peaceful and free association of me and another person.

You're not going to convince me that I would still buy raw milk, or that pasteurized milk would be unavailable, in the absence of FDA regulation.

How would you know if you were buying raw or pasteurized milk if there were no food labelling regulations obligating people to label it accordingly?

Just like I do now. I look for milk labeled "pasteurized" and make sure it's from a trusted vendor/brand or has a trusted certification.

There's a competitive advantage to labeling food, and there's no stopping companies from labeling food in the absence of food labeling regulations. The most trusted organic certification is from a for-profit certification company, Quality Assurance International. McDonald's published nutrition information before it was required by any law. Intentionally incorrect labeling is already covered by fraud and tort law.

While not always perfectly implemented, the government acts as representatives of the buyers in that transaction.

Agreed. Low service, high price and no (affordable) rooms available during high-traffic events caused competition like AirBnB. The hotels can't win by competing, so now they'll try to change the law. Not save for guests huh? Entire families with kids live in those houses. They were build by the usual and strict building safety-standards. A sprinkler in every room? What regular house has that? The hotel-lobby using politicians and politicians using FUD to do their bidding.

Restaurant health codes do exactly that. It seems to me that there are relatively few "black market" or "under the table" restaurants. (Yes, there are food trucks, but it's a recent and relatively smallscale phenomenon.)

Of course, this doesn't make health codes good, necessarily.

But what I'm more interested in - what kinds of prohibitions lead to speakeasies/organized crime, and what don't, particuarly on the scale of the Prohibition, with Al Capone, Elliot Ness, etc. ??

There is another factor - many people don't want to live in a neighborhood with a highly transient population. I posted a link to a nytimes article about this above... I think a lot of this comes down to whether you feel that changing the nature of a neighborhood (fewer long term residents) is a legitimate reason for a neighborhood to regulate short term rentals.

As you can probably tell from my phrasing, I do think it is. I wish I had a cite, but I do remember reading an article about the actual, monetary value of good long term relations with neighbors... there is an argument to be made that short term rentals are selling not just the unit but the neighborhood itself, and doing some harm to the neighborhood in the process. If that is the case, this is an externality that could be legitimately regulated.

yeah if they only cared about protecting consumers, instead of fines, they'd let you pay a few bucks to get your house inspected.

There is no legitimate justification to infringe on a contract between a willing buyer and a willing seller

this was a common refrain of slave holders - it was a pure market mechanism, the buyer and seller agreed on a price, why does the govt care?

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