Hacker News Reader

Comment by serve_yay | Hacker News Reader

So... hotels = APPLE and AirBnB = homeowners parking cars in their driveways?

I was about to make this comparison when I realized that (at least in SF) it's more apt to think of Airbnb as the result of overregulation of the monthly rental housing market. Those laws, rather than helping the tenants they were designed to protect, have pushed landlords to enter a different market. At public hearings, I've seen very few representatives from the hospitality industry and far more from tenant groups and apartment associations.

If I had to guess, I think hotels are less concerned about Airbnb because, while they both belong to the same market, they each have slightly different niches to serve and demand in the market is already high.

I was going to say something about Uber and traditional taxis in the same vein.

But then I was also going to say something about doctors, lawyers, and other professionals that form some kind of barrier around themselves... being someone who is in one of those groups.

the further I take this down the road(no pun intended), the more perplexed I find myself.

:: edited for clarity

Me too, the question mark in my post is real. Although regulatory capture is a problem, it's rather easy to use that as justification for the idea that any regulation is simply a boondoggle and exists for no other reason than to hinder the economy.

but the actual definition of regulatory capture is that regardless of the reason regulation exists (which usually is a real reason, not an invented one as in the article - the article doesn't have regulation resulting from anything any member of the public actually objected to), the regulating bodies will be captured. So take a real reason: let's say we (the public) want to improve Comcast's level of (notoriously bad) service, even in areas where they happen to be a sole provider. So how do we do this - we can only do it through some regulating body. So, okay, let's improve Comcast's atrocious service. The idea of regulatory capture is even though we have a great reason to do this, Comcast can still capture that body, and be better-off than before the regulator existed - at the expense of the public. Which is why we don't do it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

But the general argument applies to all regulation, yet we still have regulation. And Comcast's business was literally created by regulation: it is a municipal monopoly.

Your argument needs more nuance. Regulatory capture happens when no one in the general public is organized or invested enough to be part of the lobbying pool, or generally due to attrition caused by government corruption.

Except that, with Uber, you are simply trading one incumbent for another.

If Uber were simply an app that connected people and handled payment (for a fee) without exerting any other control, that would fit the parable.

Instead, Uber exerts all kinds of control over the drivers and is simply replacing one incumbent with regulatory capture with another incumbent.

This actually = Smarking (YC startup) (Data Analytics for Parking)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com