Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

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I think that's the thing about Airbnb. The experience is usually good for the people getting paid, and the people getting the service. It is frequently bad for people who are not part of that exchange at all, and just happen to be in close proximity.

The owner of my apartment building has set up an illegal air bnb in an empty apartment(I'm going to guess this is a rent controlled or stabilized apartment "under renovations"). Usually it isn't an issue, besides for frequently seeing groups of strangers come in and out of the building. Last week though, a lovely fellow decided that, after drinking what must be approximately 2 liters of wine, he was going to pick my door to puke outside of(5 floors below his air bnb) at 2AM. He then started crashing into the wall separating my bedroom and the hallway a number of times. Then he went down into the lobby, puked some more right in front of the door, then peed in the stairwell. I think it's pretty straight forward to see why tenants don't want air bnb rentals in their residences.

> The experience is usually good for the people getting paid, and the people getting the service. It is frequently bad for people who are not part of that exchange at all, and just happen to be in close proximity.

The externalitati.

That's exactly how the "sharing economy" ended up working in practice. Skirt the law, dump externalities on third parties.

Privatize gains, and socialize losses. A tried and tested formula!

I like that. Concise.

Those who bear the "socialized losses" can easily band together to become a force to be reckoned with and change things:

https://www.iWouldDo.it lets you do just that, in an efficient way.

It's also why it's such a darling for the libertarian crowd.

In fairness to the "libertarian crowd", the smart ones usually do grok negative externalities, and come up with grandiose (if naive) schemes for internalizing them. The likely result most of the time is a community that spends 20 hours out of every day in various town hall meetings, byzantine tax and fee schedules, an enforcement arm that would have to rival the Stasi in order to actually work, and of course the whole thing is very susceptible to corruption.

But they do know what negative externalities are, at least.

How exactly would the libertarian crowd get "byzantine" tax? Avoiding taxation in general seems like one of the major components of the idea.

By calling them "fees" or "voluntary contributions" or similar.

Taxes are only bad if a government extracts them at gunpoint. If a non-governmental force extracts them at... well, the gun is still there, I suppose, but hidden behind a layer of "If you don't pay, we sue, and if you don't pay after the lawsuit, the guns come out"... they're morally A-OK.

I only call it a "tax" as a shorthand, libertarians would not call it that. Rather they devise a system where, for example in the case of air pollution, there is no such thing as a public good, and instead of regulation and fines, potential air polluters would need to enter into a contract with the owners of the air in order to secure the right to pollute the air. And it pretty much goes downhill from there.

It's one of those things that might sometimes work okay on paper, but the trouble is that you can't actually try it out in practice due to the difficulty of assembling into a coherent community, a critical mass of people with the correct sort of deranged insanity to want to try it in the first place.

The solutions always involves either some kind of enforcing organization (ie - a government) or a hand wavy 'the market will provide' appeal to fervor.

I get your point but (partly to play devil's advocate)... How is this significantly different from traditional businesses? - Good for people getting paid. - Good (maybe) for people getting the service (which is often mediocre at best). - Bad for competitors. - Bad for people who invested in a competing service/product/related industry. - Often bad for the environment, neighbourhood etc.

That's the whole point. Society has constructed mechanisms for dealing with externalities: governments, laws, regulations and taxes.

Yes, Airbnb's "thing" (dirty little secret) is that some widespread neighbor abuse as documented in an HN anecdote is polluting the social value of a $20B startup.

Solution? Instead of allowing building managers/owners to allow/disallow short term leases by their lessees as determined by the externality-including market value of such a policy, let's just ban it altogether. The principle of the least-elegant solution.

I would imagine many, if not most, people's leases don't allow them to rent their places out. You see many listings that require discretion regarding entry, particularity as to where to park on the street, and forbid talking with neighbors.

NYC might be an exception as it seems like subletting is a big thing there.

Almost all full-space(that is, not staying in an extra bedroom while the owner is present) air bnb units in NYC are illegal. Subletting is usually legal, unless stated in your lease, but there are laws against short term stays(< 30 days).

No, the "thing" is common to any short term rental. It just so happens that AirBNB is the most popular way of booking a short term rental.

This "thing", is exactly why so many municipalities have explicit laws on the books regulating and taxing hotels.

So? What prevents any of the other tenants in your apartment from doing that?

1. Dent in rental history or police history. 2. Social repercussions with neighbors

> Social repercussions with neighbors

...and? If this amounts to dirty looks in the shared hallway or similar, it's pointless.

In fact, it's worse than pointless: The caring, socially-responsible people who don't want to have assholes will be hurt worst, and will be motivated to leave the business after a few bad apples, whereas the people who honestly don't give two shits until the police show up will carry on regardless, and take on more assholes as long as their checks don't bounce.

Social approbation only works well in tight-knit societies where someone not liking you can have ripple effects through everything you do. "The Scarlet Letter" is an example, both of how it works and how it is honestly a bad way to run a society.

You need laws to put teeth in the "don't do that" parts of the social contract, and you need to enforce those laws. Lawsuits can work, but they're messy and expensive and generally so draining for both sides that winning one is something of an academic point. That's one reason we as a society attempt to use lawsuits as a method of last resort, and create regulations and regulatory bodies which can enforce punishments without sending an injured party through the massive financial and personal ruin of bringing suit against someone.

Most people who act like a horde of drunken monkeys on vacation act like perfectly normal people at home.

You've never been to Hoboken!

Fear of eviction, as well as most people being normal people and wanting to maintain good relationships with people they may see every day.

Not when you're drunk enough to puke all over the building, no at that point you're more interested in how that sunbeam is triggering your hangover.

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