3 ms·

> Let's say you had an employment contract where you get paid $100k/year, but if you leave before 5 years, you have to pay a $50k penalty. 3 years in, you get a

> Let's say you had an employment contract where you get paid $100k/year, but if you leave before 5 years, you have to pay a $50k penalty. 3 years in, you get a job offer for $500k/year. Are you going to stick to the contract because you need to obey "the rules", or are you going to pay $50k and take the much higher paying job? What does that have to do with this? Someone who rents a property with the intent of subletting through Airbnb is not paying a penalty to break the contract so that they can enter a new one with different terms. They are still bound by the original contract. I'm not talking about the details of the terms, simply pointing out that your analogy of leaving one job for another does not apply.

imgabe 11y ago
My point is it's not a moral issue, it's an economic transaction. Both parties are free to negotiate the terms. The landlord often has significantly more leverage to do so.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  But herein lies the problem. By treating a civil contract as a purely economical transaction you just robbed us of the best advantages of being humans rather than mindless systems. Or look at it this way: everyone on this site knows that the basic problem with programming is that machines execute what you wrote to the letter, and do not know about what you meant. That leads to bugs, because our descriptions rarely capture our intentions precisely enough. But we, as humans, most of the time know the intention of the instructions we're receiving. Every time we force something to be evaluated formally instead of socially, we're robbing ourselves of the increased efficiency our minds give us. It's a trade-off, and it's often worth it - but it should be done only when we gain something from it. In the AirBnB subletting situation we gain nothing - contracts gets more complicated to cover new abuse vector, and end result is the same except we've just lost flexibility and efficiency by codifying another part of our interactions.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    We obviously gain something. We gain an increased supply of rooms available for short-term use on AirBnB (and corresponding lower prices). The landlord gains a tenant. The tenant gains the margin between the rent and the AirBnB fees, in exchange for the risk of vacancy, the work of listing the property and managing the guests, and the additional risk of being discovered and having the lease terminated. The tenant has a stronger incentive than usual to maintain the apartment as impeccably as possible, pay rent promptly in full, and screen AirBnB guests to minimize risks, since the lease can be cancelled with little warning if they're discovered. There's clearly a demand in the market for AirBnB. The landlord could easily cut out the middleman and list the property there themselves if they wanted to. If they want to write lease to cut themselves a portion of the profits while letting the tenant do all the work of managing the AirBnB guests, there are probably people who would take them up on that offer as well. Yes, contracts might get some extra words, but they're not written in stone. We can read the words and negotiate to change them to our liking for the mutual benefit of both parties.

imgabe 11y ago

My point is it's not a moral issue, it's an economic transaction. Both parties are free to negotiate the terms. The landlord often has significantly more leverage to do so.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
But herein lies the problem. By treating a civil contract as a purely economical transaction you just robbed us of the best advantages of being humans rather than mindless systems. Or look at it this way: everyone on this site knows that the basic problem with programming is that machines execute what you wrote to the letter, and do not know about what you meant. That leads to bugs, because our descriptions rarely capture our intentions precisely enough. But we, as humans, most of the time know the intention of the instructions we're receiving. Every time we force something to be evaluated formally instead of socially, we're robbing ourselves of the increased efficiency our minds give us. It's a trade-off, and it's often worth it - but it should be done only when we gain something from it. In the AirBnB subletting situation we gain nothing - contracts gets more complicated to cover new abuse vector, and end result is the same except we've just lost flexibility and efficiency by codifying another part of our interactions.
- imgabe 11y ago
  We obviously gain something. We gain an increased supply of rooms available for short-term use on AirBnB (and corresponding lower prices). The landlord gains a tenant. The tenant gains the margin between the rent and the AirBnB fees, in exchange for the risk of vacancy, the work of listing the property and managing the guests, and the additional risk of being discovered and having the lease terminated. The tenant has a stronger incentive than usual to maintain the apartment as impeccably as possible, pay rent promptly in full, and screen AirBnB guests to minimize risks, since the lease can be cancelled with little warning if they're discovered. There's clearly a demand in the market for AirBnB. The landlord could easily cut out the middleman and list the property there themselves if they wanted to. If they want to write lease to cut themselves a portion of the profits while letting the tenant do all the work of managing the AirBnB guests, there are probably people who would take them up on that offer as well. Yes, contracts might get some extra words, but they're not written in stone. We can read the words and negotiate to change them to our liking for the mutual benefit of both parties.