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Salviati: "It is morally wrong to pass a law saying my neighbor cannot rent his home to negroes, and those advocating for such laws are bad people." Simplicio

Salviati: "It is morally wrong to pass a law saying my neighbor cannot rent his home to negroes, and those advocating for such laws are bad people." Simplicio (historical): "In the US the answer is clearly 'yes you can regulate his private business'. In many US cities renting out a home to a negro is a violation of the local zoning code." Do you see the fallacy of this argument? I'm arguing "should", not "is".

dwaltrip 10y ago
To clarify, you don't think that any city should regulate people selling short term stays in their private residence, in any way?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I think if they do regulate it, they should have a good reason for it. All the reasons cited in this thread seem pretty bad. I say they are bad because when you apply the same reasons to regulating anything other than AirBnB, suddenly they don't seem like good reasons at all.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    I just responded to one of your examples elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13680648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13680648
  - someguydave 10y ago
    >they should have a good reason for it. The Supreme Court says otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review In order to justify the New Deal the Court lowered its standard for state infringement of liberty to: "You just need any reason for this law, it doesn't have to be a good one"
someguydave 10y ago
> Do you see the fallacy of this argument? I do. If you go read the historical justification for zoning law in the US (by the way zoning and land use laws were originally intended to keep negroes out rich neighborhoods) they rest on the idea that as long as the government can come up with a "rational basis" that the law would "improve the public welfare" than zoning laws are a legitimate exercise in state police power. This was around the 1920's. Later you have a concern for civil rights but the courts pretty much ignored the issue of how zoning might impact poor minorities. There's been some lefty rumbling about maybe modifying the zoning code so that poor minorities can still afford to live in rich areas. Of course the remedies proposed are better zoning laws, not no zoning laws. My concern is that these land use laws take away yield from capital (ie rent from landowners). The US economy has not been growing very fast lately - I don't think the US can any longer afford the costs of an extensive regulatory state. Locking away the returns to land in exchange for centrally planning all the land uses might make things feel "nice" in the short run but in the long run could impoverish the country.

dwaltrip 10y ago

To clarify, you don't think that any city should regulate people selling short term stays in their private residence, in any way?

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I think if they do regulate it, they should have a good reason for it. All the reasons cited in this thread seem pretty bad. I say they are bad because when you apply the same reasons to regulating anything other than AirBnB, suddenly they don't seem like good reasons at all.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  I just responded to one of your examples elsewhere in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13680648 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13680648
- someguydave 10y ago
  >they should have a good reason for it. The Supreme Court says otherwise: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review In order to justify the New Deal the Court lowered its standard for state infringement of liberty to: "You just need any reason for this law, it doesn't have to be a good one"

someguydave 10y ago

> Do you see the fallacy of this argument? I do. If you go read the historical justification for zoning law in the US (by the way zoning and land use laws were originally intended to keep negroes out rich neighborhoods) they rest on the idea that as long as the government can come up with a "rational basis" that the law would "improve the public welfare" than zoning laws are a legitimate exercise in state police power. This was around the 1920's. Later you have a concern for civil rights but the courts pretty much ignored the issue of how zoning might impact poor minorities. There's been some lefty rumbling about maybe modifying the zoning code so that poor minorities can still afford to live in rich areas. Of course the remedies proposed are better zoning laws, not no zoning laws. My concern is that these land use laws take away yield from capital (ie rent from landowners). The US economy has not been growing very fast lately - I don't think the US can any longer afford the costs of an extensive regulatory state. Locking away the returns to land in exchange for centrally planning all the land uses might make things feel "nice" in the short run but in the long run could impoverish the country.