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I'm of the view that property rights are an important component of civil rights. I think the constitution is on my side given the fourth amendment. It's inter

I'm of the view that property rights are an important component of civil rights. I think the constitution is on my side given the fourth amendment. It's interesting that on HN I see near universal support for the freedom to smoke pot in one's home, or to live with a same-sex partner, or replace a lawn with a rock garden, or to have our communications remain private. But when it comes to letting someone crash on your couch in exchange for a few bucks, suddenly there are calls for a full-scale invasion of privacy and limitation of what one can do in their own home, in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Obviously property rights have reasonable limitations, but is Airbnb really such a case? If you have a neighbor that is hosting a bad guest, then surely the bad behavior is the problem (and probably already illegal).

jacquesm 11y ago
> freedom to smoke pot in one's home, or to live with a same-sex partner, or replace a lawn with a rock garden, or to have our communications remain private. Those affect you. > when it comes to letting someone crash on your couch in exchange for a few bucks That scenario also only affects you, when you add the term 'occasionally'. But if you live in a residential area and suddenly on four sides you find yourself with low-budget hotels with people coming and going at all hours and partying until 3 am because the owner of the apartment is absent when the guests are there then that is not a nice thing per-se and this is where your 'couch' starts to leak in to the lives of others around you. So yes, AirBNB really can be such a case.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  Then enforce noise regulations and other common property laws. If a long term tenant college party house moves in beside you, then you have the exact same problems. But you cannot blame AirBnB or similar in this case.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    Long term college tenants as a rule are extremely well behaved, mostly because they value quiet as much as the next person (or even more) on account of their studies. They may have a few more parties than any other household but as a rule they don't generate too much of a problem because they are in there for the longer term and so have to be on good terms with the rest of the neighborhood. And I would not blame AirBNB in that case because they have absolutely nothing to do with that.
- imgabe 11y ago
  People "coming and going" at all hours? How is that a problem? People are allowed to go into and out of their houses at any hour. Are you going to get all pissy if your neighbor works odd hours and gets home at 3am every night? If you're talking about a residential area with single family homes, how likely is it you're actually going to hear or notice someone entering or leaving your neighbor's house in the middle of the night? "Partying until 3am" is possibly a problem. That's what noise ordinances are for.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > People are allowed to go into and out of their houses at any hour. They're allowed to, sure. But in practice the expectation is that these are the exceptions, not the rule and apartments are typically constructed with that expectation in mind. > Are you going to get all pissy if your neighbor works odd hours and gets home at 3am every night? No, where did you get that impression? My neighbor, who works odd hours and gets home at 3am every night is a considerate person and has a long term relationship with me, his neighbor. And that's why he tries not to slam the door and he doesn't invite his 4 drunk friends over to his digs for 24 hours. > If you're talking about a residential area with single family homes, how likely is it you're actually going to hear or notice someone entering or leaving your neighbor's house in the middle of the night? I'm not talking about 'single family homes', I'm talking about apartments in just about every major city where AirBNB and such are getting people very upset. > "Partying until 3am" is possibly a problem. That's what noise ordinances are for. Yes, except that if your 'neighbors' change every 24 hours they don't give a damn about their reputation they will just do it until the police shows up and then do it somewhere else the next day.
    - imgabe 11y ago
      It's no doubt the exception for AirBnB guests as well. Most people, even when they're staying out of town, don't throw wild parties in the middle of the night. > Yes, except that if your 'neighbors' change every 24 hours they don't give a damn about their reputation they will just do it until the police shows up and then do it somewhere else the next day. Really? Are we positing that there are roving bands of assholes who travel from one AirBnB to the next, throwing wild parties every night? Is there something to back that up? If such people exist, I doubt they'd find a lack of AirBnB sufficient motivation to be a respectful neighbor. Living around other human beings means that sometimes someone does something that annoys you. Yeah, it sucks if there's a party and you have to call the police one night. It happens. That's part of the cost of living in a society. There's a lot of benefits too.
untog 11y ago
in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Their lives being disrupted. There are enough horror stories out there that you'd have to try very hard to ignore them - short term renters simply do not care about community and shared spaces in the same way that long term residents do. You living with a same-sex partner has absolutely no effect on my life. You renting out your apartment to tourists who are loud, disruptive and trash common property does. And yes, that behaviour is already illegal but it's incredibly difficult to secure any kind of prosecution for it. I'm not suggesting that we should ban AirBnb here, but I think "it's all just property rights" is also a dramatic oversimplification in the opposite direction.
- nostromo 11y ago
  Don't be motivated by horror stories. Airbnb has hosted over 40 million people. More people than the population of California. I'm sure there are some bad experiences on Airbnb (and in California, where there are multiple murders every day) but are they statistically significant?
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    The horror stories are actually what is important in the face of 40 million people staying in various places. Big numbers are big numbers and nothing especially interesting in-and-of-themselves. That you would so callously discount the discomfort people feel in their own homes due to the profit motive of their neighbors is what should be emphasized as the negative aspect of what AirBnB enables. You care about statistical significance and not the human aspect and I simply can't respect that sort of inhuman profit-loss calculation.
colmvp 11y ago
> But when it comes to letting someone crash on your couch in exchange for a few bucks, suddenly there are calls for a full-scale invasion of privacy and limitation of what one can do in their own home, in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Are we talking about someone crashing on your couch? Or we talking about someone who converts their property into a perpetual short-term rental?
Symbiote 11y ago
> in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? In my case, the late-night noise, rubbish and vomit of the people staying in the apartment above mine. The vomit was disgusting, it splashed down all the balconies from the 5th floor to the ground. But at least the culprit was immediately obvious. A cleaning bill was sent to the owner of that apartment, and the different-every-weekend people having a party on the balcony above mine stopped. And it's hardly a few bucks. More like €80-100/night. > limitation of what one can do in their own home It's typically forbidden to use your home as a restaurant, crèche, laundry etc without some form of permission. Why should turning it into a hotel be different?
- morgante 11y ago
  Your neighbors can also have rowdy friends over. What difference does it make whether the people there are paying or not? If there's behavior with negative externalities, regulate the behavior. Not the particular circumstances.
  - snappy173 11y ago
    "regulate the behavior" what if the behavior is already regulated, but is difficult to enforce?
    - morgante 11y ago
      Then step up enforcement. That's the problem which should be addressed, and is just as relevant if a bunch of stereotypically rowdy college kids move in next door.
      - snappy173 11y ago
        what if said company spends millions applying political pressure to oppose that?
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    If the neighbour lives there, they have to handle the fallout, whether that's angry people bashing on their door past midnight, the police, or just spiteful glances in the morning. With AirBnB-as-a-hotel, the neighbour hardly ever has to meet the people they're annoying. This surely makes a difference in the behaviour of guests.
netcan 11y ago
I think the right not to be interfered with is important too. This includes property rights, but I wouldn't necessarily put it at the very top of the list morally. They're pretty important economically. In any case, I think it's interesting you said "freedom to smoke pot in one's home." Many aspects of liberalism/libertarianism are fairly incompatible with fundamentalism, though people try. Once you accept that a little taxation is necessary to fund police or something, you give up on a fundamentalist purity. Once you put in a caveat that you're freedoms end where they diminish another's you end up with grey areas. The grey area here is that what you do with your property affects your neighbours. If you have a rock garden or an unkempt mess (or a wrong coloured door if you're in the Netherlands) the neighbourhood is different. Everything we do affects other people and we need some lines. AirBnB built an entire society in the grey area. The whiter sections are renting a couch to travellers. A darker shad might be a setup that rents out 4 apartments in a 10 unit building with appeal to a noisier or more disruptive market segment.
staunch 11y ago
> in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Drunken guests regularly wake my 62 year old mother up by pounding on the wrong door at 2AM. She's been complaining for many months to Airbnb and they do not care. An Airbnb guest got into a fight with a tenant of my previous apartment building. Only possible because Airbnb let drunken frat boys party in a building full of families. The Airbnb host doesn't care, the Airbnb guest doesn't care, and Airbnb itself doesn't care. The people that care have no ability to fix the problem.

jacquesm 11y ago

> freedom to smoke pot in one's home, or to live with a same-sex partner, or replace a lawn with a rock garden, or to have our communications remain private. Those affect you. > when it comes to letting someone crash on your couch in exchange for a few bucks That scenario also only affects you, when you add the term 'occasionally'. But if you live in a residential area and suddenly on four sides you find yourself with low-budget hotels with people coming and going at all hours and partying until 3 am because the owner of the apartment is absent when the guests are there then that is not a nice thing per-se and this is where your 'couch' starts to leak in to the lives of others around you. So yes, AirBNB really can be such a case.

mahyarm 11y ago
Then enforce noise regulations and other common property laws. If a long term tenant college party house moves in beside you, then you have the exact same problems. But you cannot blame AirBnB or similar in this case.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  Long term college tenants as a rule are extremely well behaved, mostly because they value quiet as much as the next person (or even more) on account of their studies. They may have a few more parties than any other household but as a rule they don't generate too much of a problem because they are in there for the longer term and so have to be on good terms with the rest of the neighborhood. And I would not blame AirBNB in that case because they have absolutely nothing to do with that.
imgabe 11y ago
People "coming and going" at all hours? How is that a problem? People are allowed to go into and out of their houses at any hour. Are you going to get all pissy if your neighbor works odd hours and gets home at 3am every night? If you're talking about a residential area with single family homes, how likely is it you're actually going to hear or notice someone entering or leaving your neighbor's house in the middle of the night? "Partying until 3am" is possibly a problem. That's what noise ordinances are for.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > People are allowed to go into and out of their houses at any hour. They're allowed to, sure. But in practice the expectation is that these are the exceptions, not the rule and apartments are typically constructed with that expectation in mind. > Are you going to get all pissy if your neighbor works odd hours and gets home at 3am every night? No, where did you get that impression? My neighbor, who works odd hours and gets home at 3am every night is a considerate person and has a long term relationship with me, his neighbor. And that's why he tries not to slam the door and he doesn't invite his 4 drunk friends over to his digs for 24 hours. > If you're talking about a residential area with single family homes, how likely is it you're actually going to hear or notice someone entering or leaving your neighbor's house in the middle of the night? I'm not talking about 'single family homes', I'm talking about apartments in just about every major city where AirBNB and such are getting people very upset. > "Partying until 3am" is possibly a problem. That's what noise ordinances are for. Yes, except that if your 'neighbors' change every 24 hours they don't give a damn about their reputation they will just do it until the police shows up and then do it somewhere else the next day.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    It's no doubt the exception for AirBnB guests as well. Most people, even when they're staying out of town, don't throw wild parties in the middle of the night. > Yes, except that if your 'neighbors' change every 24 hours they don't give a damn about their reputation they will just do it until the police shows up and then do it somewhere else the next day. Really? Are we positing that there are roving bands of assholes who travel from one AirBnB to the next, throwing wild parties every night? Is there something to back that up? If such people exist, I doubt they'd find a lack of AirBnB sufficient motivation to be a respectful neighbor. Living around other human beings means that sometimes someone does something that annoys you. Yeah, it sucks if there's a party and you have to call the police one night. It happens. That's part of the cost of living in a society. There's a lot of benefits too.

untog 11y ago

in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Their lives being disrupted. There are enough horror stories out there that you'd have to try very hard to ignore them - short term renters simply do not care about community and shared spaces in the same way that long term residents do. You living with a same-sex partner has absolutely no effect on my life. You renting out your apartment to tourists who are loud, disruptive and trash common property does. And yes, that behaviour is already illegal but it's incredibly difficult to secure any kind of prosecution for it. I'm not suggesting that we should ban AirBnb here, but I think "it's all just property rights" is also a dramatic oversimplification in the opposite direction.

nostromo 11y ago
Don't be motivated by horror stories. Airbnb has hosted over 40 million people. More people than the population of California. I'm sure there are some bad experiences on Airbnb (and in California, where there are multiple murders every day) but are they statistically significant?
- wavefunction 11y ago
  The horror stories are actually what is important in the face of 40 million people staying in various places. Big numbers are big numbers and nothing especially interesting in-and-of-themselves. That you would so callously discount the discomfort people feel in their own homes due to the profit motive of their neighbors is what should be emphasized as the negative aspect of what AirBnB enables. You care about statistical significance and not the human aspect and I simply can't respect that sort of inhuman profit-loss calculation.

colmvp 11y ago

> But when it comes to letting someone crash on your couch in exchange for a few bucks, suddenly there are calls for a full-scale invasion of privacy and limitation of what one can do in their own home, in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Are we talking about someone crashing on your couch? Or we talking about someone who converts their property into a perpetual short-term rental?

Symbiote 11y ago

> in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? In my case, the late-night noise, rubbish and vomit of the people staying in the apartment above mine. The vomit was disgusting, it splashed down all the balconies from the 5th floor to the ground. But at least the culprit was immediately obvious. A cleaning bill was sent to the owner of that apartment, and the different-every-weekend people having a party on the balcony above mine stopped. And it's hardly a few bucks. More like €80-100/night. > limitation of what one can do in their own home It's typically forbidden to use your home as a restaurant, crèche, laundry etc without some form of permission. Why should turning it into a hotel be different?

morgante 11y ago
Your neighbors can also have rowdy friends over. What difference does it make whether the people there are paying or not? If there's behavior with negative externalities, regulate the behavior. Not the particular circumstances.
- snappy173 11y ago
  "regulate the behavior" what if the behavior is already regulated, but is difficult to enforce?
  - morgante 11y ago
    Then step up enforcement. That's the problem which should be addressed, and is just as relevant if a bunch of stereotypically rowdy college kids move in next door.
    - snappy173 11y ago
      what if said company spends millions applying political pressure to oppose that?
- Symbiote 11y ago
  If the neighbour lives there, they have to handle the fallout, whether that's angry people bashing on their door past midnight, the police, or just spiteful glances in the morning. With AirBnB-as-a-hotel, the neighbour hardly ever has to meet the people they're annoying. This surely makes a difference in the behaviour of guests.

netcan 11y ago

I think the right not to be interfered with is important too. This includes property rights, but I wouldn't necessarily put it at the very top of the list morally. They're pretty important economically. In any case, I think it's interesting you said "freedom to smoke pot in one's home." Many aspects of liberalism/libertarianism are fairly incompatible with fundamentalism, though people try. Once you accept that a little taxation is necessary to fund police or something, you give up on a fundamentalist purity. Once you put in a caveat that you're freedoms end where they diminish another's you end up with grey areas. The grey area here is that what you do with your property affects your neighbours. If you have a rock garden or an unkempt mess (or a wrong coloured door if you're in the Netherlands) the neighbourhood is different. Everything we do affects other people and we need some lines. AirBnB built an entire society in the grey area. The whiter sections are renting a couch to travellers. A darker shad might be a setup that rents out 4 apartments in a 10 unit building with appeal to a noisier or more disruptive market segment.

staunch 11y ago

> in order to protect one's neighbors from... what exactly? Drunken guests regularly wake my 62 year old mother up by pounding on the wrong door at 2AM. She's been complaining for many months to Airbnb and they do not care. An Airbnb guest got into a fight with a tenant of my previous apartment building. Only possible because Airbnb let drunken frat boys party in a building full of families. The Airbnb host doesn't care, the Airbnb guest doesn't care, and Airbnb itself doesn't care. The people that care have no ability to fix the problem.