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Comment by parineum | Hacker News Reader

That's what happens when the majority of people don't actually support the regulations.

If people thought it was wrong to be an unlicensed airbnb or uber, they wouldn't use them. In reality, those regulations are mostly protection rackets and most people don't care about violating them.

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I disagree. When you give people strong economic incentives to ignore morality, some people will. Not all, but enough to make a hash of things. In any population there will be some people who will do things they know are wrong just to get ahead.

For Airbnb landlords I'm sure the thought process goes like " I'm just one person so I can't be having enough of an impact to be a problem. And besides, I need the money." But then enough people pile on and in aggregate they ruin the local housing market. But nobody thinks that they themselves are culpable

I’m struggling to understand the moral character of taxi service regulatory capture and monopolization.

Your taxi crashes because the driver skipped brake maintenance and his insurance doesn't reimburse you for your hospital costs because commercial transportation isn't covered. Sure would be nice to have some minimum requirements for taxis.

If maintenance schedules and insurance regulations are “moral” issues, what isn’t?

The moral issue is when the executives at Uber know with certainty that their driver compensation and incentives push drivers to neglect required maintenance on their vehicles.

Much in the same way tobacco companies knew for a long time how addictive and harmful smoking was.

And how Facebook knows they let their advertisers scam their users, and the way social media was pushing teen suicides higher. They knew and kept pushing policies which made the problem worse. All so they could collect bigger compensation packages.

Eh… there’s a point to be made about “enforced low risk tolerance” being a societal issue.

Lead in gasoline is bad, but in general I think individuals are perfectly capable of determining whether they are willing to risk a taxi ride.

Would they risk a taxi ride if they knew that Uber failed to properly background check a driver, who later kidnapped and raped one of his passengers, and Uber's response was to hire private investigators to dig up personal information on the victim in an attempt to discredit her? [1]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42291495

People were (and mostly still are) very opposed to Airbnb rentals in their neighborhood.

... but the customers of these Airbnb rentals are not. :-)

People support anti-pollution measures yet corporations still choose to pollute. Curious.

People whose houses are robbed are against robbery, people who rob houses are very much for it.

That’s a false analogy.

You have two parties who want to enter into a contract and a third party unrelated to the contract that doesn’t for whatever reason. Just based on contract law and common sense the unrelated party shouldn’t have standing. Now if there’s externalities to the contract that impact that unrelated party sure, but only insofar as to get those externalities addressed.

This is not the same as a robbery which involves no contract or a willing counterparty to the robbery.

Yeah, IME, if the guests of the rental acted exactly like locals, and the units were not removed from the local housing supply (not sure how that could be), or the local housing supply was in excess to the needs of the population (not sure where that is), it would be fine.

I don’t understand why the local housing supply is privileged in your scenario. And if the local housing supply is a problem it’s one the locals created themselves so…

You believe that the local area has no standing, that's incorrect. Laws and regulations are third parties impeding on the contract all the time. Libertarians may dislike this, but it's one problem with democracy - the majority make decisions you don't like.

that's the point of the regulations...

That's none of their business.

There are already laws in place against the kinds of behavior that neighbors are afraid will happen.

Noise, litter, etc, "nuisance" laws are on the books, but mostly depend on people following them voluntarily. The local authorities don't have the time/staff to investigate and resolve them all the time.

This is certainly the most uncharitable way to think about it.

I see a prisoner’s dilemma where people often support regulations even if on an individual basis they would personally violate them, because they prefer living in a the less chaotic society. For example anti-dumping regulations… the expected value for any given individual is +EV, but when everyone is dumping, it’s a big -EV

The perfect example is speed limits: everybody thinks they're good and yet they all seem to classify all other drivers into two categories: slowpokes and maniacs.

Nobody seems to be able to agree on what a responsible set of rules is around the speed of vehicles.

This is entirely made up? Most people are totally fine with speed limits being what they are and don't say anything about it.

Oh, that explains the massive difference in speed limits from one country to another then, especially if they're next door neighbors.

i don't see what that has to do with it

In the sense that they don't care what the sign says when it comes to their own driving? Sure.

no, in the sense that they just follow whatever the rules are and don't care very much, or mildly break them as is convenient and still don't care very much

That's because they are slowpokes and maniacs: In a decently flowing road, the majority of distinct cars you see are either moving significantly faster or slower than you (and the more extreme the difference the more likely you are to see them). Of cars that go at a similar speed to you, they approach you / you approach them more slowly so you'll see fewer of them.

that can't be right. If 90% of people are anti-airbnb and the other 10% are pro-airbnb then the 10% just open all the airbnbs.

That's interpreting a failure to fight to preserve ethics as an internal rejection when it could be explained by a lack of fighting spirit, either because the fight seems impossible or the given hill not worth dying on. Another interpretation would be a comfort-oriented, avoidant, and possibly cynical culture facing a power imbalance.

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