7 ms·

In NYC here as well; I think AirBNB is a pox. It's a great and useful product, I can't dispute that. But the economic ramifications of it outweigh the benefits

In NYC here as well; I think AirBNB is a pox. It's a great and useful product, I can't dispute that. But the economic ramifications of it outweigh the benefits by a large margin. And when you add on the unregulated latent racism (multiple reports, too lazy to cite) and the fact that there's next to zero safety checks in place for things like smoke detectors and so on, it's really sort of surprising that so many people defend it.

santoshalper 9y ago
Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. I am taking my family to Atlanta next week for my son's birthday. Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. The level of myopia here is staggering. The sharing economy is a tidal wave of economic change - mostly for good. You'd throw pebbles at it trying to stop it. It's both wrongheaded and comically pointless.
- gist 9y ago
  > Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. It doesn't outweigh the negative impact of airbnb. > As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Why in the world does that matter at all? Are you saying that you have not received any upside from interacting over the years with 'a large corporation'? And that they have no value? Or that you think it just makes you a better person because your money went to an individual as if you have just donated to a person or charity in need?
  - quuquuquu 9y ago
    >re: travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities neither are steak, chicken, lobster, toilet paper, SUVs, TVs, rockets to space, streaming movies, fireworks... and yet the production and consumption of these things carry personal and societal risks. who are we to judge, unfortunately? >re: have not received any value from a large corporation? I think what the poster is saying there is that he receives value from smaller individual landlords and from large corporations- -but that they would prefer if it went to individual landlords because they might be a better steward to the community than a corporation
    - realityking 9y ago
      > toilet paper I'd like to dispute that one. Hygiene is certainly one of life's necessities if we want to share this planet with 7 billion other people.
      - quuquuquu 9y ago
        Haha yeah I agree too, but there are a lot of ways to clean yourself adequately and safely without specifically using toilet paper. Some ways that come to mind include pressurized water, sanitary wipes, other ways that could result in a physical and bacterial clean etc Western toilet paper is just but one way to achieve hygiene and could therefore be considered replaceable by something else
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - DanBC 9y ago
    > Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. They're in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. > > Article 13. > > (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. > > (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. > > Article 24. > > Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. > > Article 27. > (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. > (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
- wepple 9y ago
  > As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Give it a couple of years and professional landlords using AirBNB will look no different to a corporation.
  - djsumdog 9y ago
    This person may have not given their money to an individual home owner. It could have been a landlord that operated several houses and acted like they are renting out thier home or vacation spot. It's really impossible to tell.
- praneshp 9y ago
  Looking only from a customer's perspective and ignoring everything else is the only myopic statement I've seen in this discussion so far.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > The level of myopia here is staggering. Yes, it really is. /s And what will you do to stop that individual from spending their 'saved' money on big corporations?
- jliptzin 9y ago
  Not really. I used to use AirBnB, but I went back to hotels. It's worth the extra money. Let me know how it works out for you and your family when you get there and the host is nowhere to be found and doesn't pick up his phone for 3 hours because he forgot, or you realize at 1am on a Saturday you forgot to take the key to the front door with you and there's nothing you can do about it until 10am, or afterwards when you get an angry 1 star review from the host because you left in a hurry to catch a flight and forgot to put a sheet in the dryer.
  - matwood 9y ago
    AirBnb has pushed down hotel room prices which makes going back to hotel rooms easier. I mostly use AirBnb in Europe, and have had good experiences. If I'm in a place < 2 nights though, I'll do a hotel.
  - zimablue 9y ago
    This has actually happened to me (host not there) but a: we just booked a cheap shitty room for the night b: AirBnB responded well and ensured we were taken care of in terms of refunds/reviews c: it was partly our fault I think because we didn't contact them in the week before we turned up, in future I'd always double check and confirm the plan.
  - spamizbad 9y ago
    Wait... AirBnB hosts can require guests to "refresh" their own bedding before they leave?
    - tedmiston 9y ago
      Yes, I've seen before "please put sheets and towels in the washer and start before you leave" (as a tradeoff you get a reduced cleaning fee). It's similar to what some hostels ask guests to do.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    I had the same experience -- just did a mini-tour of Europe in March and, at every Airbnb, the host was MIA at a critical moment. Also, it was a major inconvenience that they typically had only one key and couldn't issue you others.
- matt4077 9y ago
  This isn't "sharing economy" anymore. The term was coined for what AirBnB and Uber may have originally been: lower transaction costs to capture the value of space/car seats that would otherwise go unused. That idea got a warm welcome because it's almost universally good; Not just for those buying and selling, but producing positive externalities along the way: more car sharing means less traffic and lower emissions etc. But what these businesses have turned into are marketplaces for exactly what they were trying to replace, i. e. Taxis and hotels. The difference that remains is just a different allocation along several zero-sum trade-offs. Uber changed the bargain for taxi rides, essentially taking money from the top and bottom of society, and giving it to the middle. The 1% are subsidising your taxi rides with their investments, and the pool of drivers is fast approaching to be the same people who would usually drive taxis. Only now their pay is 25% lower, and they no longer have health insurance and other benefits. With AirBnB, the deal they offer is also just a different trade-off. In this case, the customers themselves also bear some of the downsides of the cheap price, although they may not notice. If you always wanted to safe 50 cents/night on your hotel bill because you thought that smoke alarms or secondary emergency exits are luxuries, AirBnB is your friend. The other losers are, unfortunately, almost exclusively people who aren't part of these transactions: the neighbours who get to experience the downsides of having budget-conscious traveler having the time of their lives next door. Or those who can't find affordable homes because parts of the market have been diverted to tourism (where a hotel is usually significantly more space-effective than apartments). In both cases, these companies are making decisions that were traditionally reserved for the political sphere. Politics is the process of balancing competing interests, with mechanisms to reach equitable outcomes in a process that sometimes fails to, but at least aspires to, being fair and transparent. It's good to see politicians reasserting their power with all the legitimacy the process to elect them brings vis-a-vis these companies trying to ride the wave of cynicism to a big payday. Because all the allure of AirBnB's and Uber's PR strategy rests on this libertarian fairytale of "regulatory strangulation", i. e. the phenomenon that it's en vogue to decry some unknown "regulations", without ever naming any specific safety rules that are supposedly unnecessary. Or to ridicule some specific rule, but without investing the minimum of time to see why people, after reviewing all the information available, may have come up with them. There may certainly be some regulations that should be eased. In fact, it's almost a given that for any rule or law, you can make a credible case to change it in either direction: if it takes 100,000 smoke detectors to save one life per year, and if they cost $20 each per year, putting them into every room only makes sense if you value a life at more than $2,000,000. And you can argue about the 2 million, or the price (will they get cheaper or more expensive if we require them?), or the number of lives saved. But you can't credibly say "OMG the government is stoopid". And before people say they want these decisions to be made by the people involved, i. e. for AirBnB to have "has smoke detectors" on their listing: it is almost always cheaper to centralise such decision making. It'd be a waste of time if every guest had to check the smoke detectors' batteries individually, and certify that they actually do detect smoke, and that their batteries do not spontaneously start burning themselves every now and then etc.
- bradleyjg 9y ago
  Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. ... The level of myopia here is staggering. It is indeed. You, the host, and AirBnB are splitting the gains from ignoring laws designed to internalize externalities. Instead you celebrate privatizing benefits and pushing costs onto others. Yes, it benefits you in the short run. Most anti-social behavior does. Do you teach your children that it is okay for a company to dump toxic waste in a river as long as they pass along some of the savings to their customers?
  - closeparen 9y ago
    The externalities are... what exactly? Too much foot traffic to your door? That's hardly analogous to toxic waste dumping. (Assuming you are talking about single room rather than whole home rentals. Whole home rentals certainly do have the toxic effect of lowering housing supply in cities starved for rentals).
    - bradleyjg 9y ago
      Do you think the grandparent poster is renting a single room when he takes his family to Atlanta next week? Also, what percentage of AirBnB revenue do you think comes from single room rentals?
    - gordaco 9y ago
      The main externality is driving the price up and shrinking the pool of homes for actual residents who need to rent a place to live. This is already happening in some parts of the world. For example, people from Barcelona are starting to protest (see [1], and [2] by the way. In Spanish, sorry!). In my city, Málaga, it's starting to happen as well. I personally know a person who had to move out because the landlord wanted to use their flat for Airbnb. [1] https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2017/08/03/companias/1501774445_329587.html https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2017/08/03/companias/... [2] http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20170626/423707143344/directivo-airbnb-piso-ilegal-barcelona.html http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20170626/4237071...
      - 9y ago
- bogomipz 9y ago
  >"As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual." You realize that a "large corporation" employes lots of local people to maintain and operate that hotel right? Those same local people who are employed by that "large corporation" all contribute a portion of their paycheck to local and state tax coffers.

santoshalper 9y ago

Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. I am taking my family to Atlanta next week for my son's birthday. Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. The level of myopia here is staggering. The sharing economy is a tidal wave of economic change - mostly for good. You'd throw pebbles at it trying to stop it. It's both wrongheaded and comically pointless.

gist 9y ago
> Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead. Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. It doesn't outweigh the negative impact of airbnb. > As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Why in the world does that matter at all? Are you saying that you have not received any upside from interacting over the years with 'a large corporation'? And that they have no value? Or that you think it just makes you a better person because your money went to an individual as if you have just donated to a person or charity in need?
- quuquuquu 9y ago
  >re: travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities neither are steak, chicken, lobster, toilet paper, SUVs, TVs, rockets to space, streaming movies, fireworks... and yet the production and consumption of these things carry personal and societal risks. who are we to judge, unfortunately? >re: have not received any value from a large corporation? I think what the poster is saying there is that he receives value from smaller individual landlords and from large corporations- -but that they would prefer if it went to individual landlords because they might be a better steward to the community than a corporation
  - realityking 9y ago
    > toilet paper I'd like to dispute that one. Hygiene is certainly one of life's necessities if we want to share this planet with 7 billion other people.
    - quuquuquu 9y ago
      Haha yeah I agree too, but there are a lot of ways to clean yourself adequately and safely without specifically using toilet paper. Some ways that come to mind include pressurized water, sanitary wipes, other ways that could result in a physical and bacterial clean etc Western toilet paper is just but one way to achieve hygiene and could therefore be considered replaceable by something else
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- DanBC 9y ago
  > Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. They're in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. > > Article 13. > > (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. > > (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. > > Article 24. > > Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. > > Article 27. > (1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits. > (2) Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
wepple 9y ago
> As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual. Give it a couple of years and professional landlords using AirBNB will look no different to a corporation.
- djsumdog 9y ago
  This person may have not given their money to an individual home owner. It could have been a landlord that operated several houses and acted like they are renting out thier home or vacation spot. It's really impossible to tell.
praneshp 9y ago
Looking only from a customer's perspective and ignoring everything else is the only myopic statement I've seen in this discussion so far.
jacquesm 9y ago
> The level of myopia here is staggering. Yes, it really is. /s And what will you do to stop that individual from spending their 'saved' money on big corporations?
jliptzin 9y ago
Not really. I used to use AirBnB, but I went back to hotels. It's worth the extra money. Let me know how it works out for you and your family when you get there and the host is nowhere to be found and doesn't pick up his phone for 3 hours because he forgot, or you realize at 1am on a Saturday you forgot to take the key to the front door with you and there's nothing you can do about it until 10am, or afterwards when you get an angry 1 star review from the host because you left in a hurry to catch a flight and forgot to put a sheet in the dryer.
- matwood 9y ago
  AirBnb has pushed down hotel room prices which makes going back to hotel rooms easier. I mostly use AirBnb in Europe, and have had good experiences. If I'm in a place < 2 nights though, I'll do a hotel.
- zimablue 9y ago
  This has actually happened to me (host not there) but a: we just booked a cheap shitty room for the night b: AirBnB responded well and ensured we were taken care of in terms of refunds/reviews c: it was partly our fault I think because we didn't contact them in the week before we turned up, in future I'd always double check and confirm the plan.
- spamizbad 9y ago
  Wait... AirBnB hosts can require guests to "refresh" their own bedding before they leave?
  - tedmiston 9y ago
    Yes, I've seen before "please put sheets and towels in the washer and start before you leave" (as a tradeoff you get a reduced cleaning fee). It's similar to what some hostels ask guests to do.
- SilasX 9y ago
  I had the same experience -- just did a mini-tour of Europe in March and, at every Airbnb, the host was MIA at a critical moment. Also, it was a major inconvenience that they typically had only one key and couldn't issue you others.
matt4077 9y ago
This isn't "sharing economy" anymore. The term was coined for what AirBnB and Uber may have originally been: lower transaction costs to capture the value of space/car seats that would otherwise go unused. That idea got a warm welcome because it's almost universally good; Not just for those buying and selling, but producing positive externalities along the way: more car sharing means less traffic and lower emissions etc. But what these businesses have turned into are marketplaces for exactly what they were trying to replace, i. e. Taxis and hotels. The difference that remains is just a different allocation along several zero-sum trade-offs. Uber changed the bargain for taxi rides, essentially taking money from the top and bottom of society, and giving it to the middle. The 1% are subsidising your taxi rides with their investments, and the pool of drivers is fast approaching to be the same people who would usually drive taxis. Only now their pay is 25% lower, and they no longer have health insurance and other benefits. With AirBnB, the deal they offer is also just a different trade-off. In this case, the customers themselves also bear some of the downsides of the cheap price, although they may not notice. If you always wanted to safe 50 cents/night on your hotel bill because you thought that smoke alarms or secondary emergency exits are luxuries, AirBnB is your friend. The other losers are, unfortunately, almost exclusively people who aren't part of these transactions: the neighbours who get to experience the downsides of having budget-conscious traveler having the time of their lives next door. Or those who can't find affordable homes because parts of the market have been diverted to tourism (where a hotel is usually significantly more space-effective than apartments). In both cases, these companies are making decisions that were traditionally reserved for the political sphere. Politics is the process of balancing competing interests, with mechanisms to reach equitable outcomes in a process that sometimes fails to, but at least aspires to, being fair and transparent. It's good to see politicians reasserting their power with all the legitimacy the process to elect them brings vis-a-vis these companies trying to ride the wave of cynicism to a big payday. Because all the allure of AirBnB's and Uber's PR strategy rests on this libertarian fairytale of "regulatory strangulation", i. e. the phenomenon that it's en vogue to decry some unknown "regulations", without ever naming any specific safety rules that are supposedly unnecessary. Or to ridicule some specific rule, but without investing the minimum of time to see why people, after reviewing all the information available, may have come up with them. There may certainly be some regulations that should be eased. In fact, it's almost a given that for any rule or law, you can make a credible case to change it in either direction: if it takes 100,000 smoke detectors to save one life per year, and if they cost $20 each per year, putting them into every room only makes sense if you value a life at more than $2,000,000. And you can argue about the 2 million, or the price (will they get cheaper or more expensive if we require them?), or the number of lives saved. But you can't credibly say "OMG the government is stoopid". And before people say they want these decisions to be made by the people involved, i. e. for AirBnB to have "has smoke detectors" on their listing: it is almost always cheaper to centralise such decision making. It'd be a waste of time if every guest had to check the smoke detectors' batteries individually, and certify that they actually do detect smoke, and that their batteries do not spontaneously start burning themselves every now and then etc.
bradleyjg 9y ago
Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. ... The level of myopia here is staggering. It is indeed. You, the host, and AirBnB are splitting the gains from ignoring laws designed to internalize externalities. Instead you celebrate privatizing benefits and pushing costs onto others. Yes, it benefits you in the short run. Most anti-social behavior does. Do you teach your children that it is okay for a company to dump toxic waste in a river as long as they pass along some of the savings to their customers?
- closeparen 9y ago
  The externalities are... what exactly? Too much foot traffic to your door? That's hardly analogous to toxic waste dumping. (Assuming you are talking about single room rather than whole home rentals. Whole home rentals certainly do have the toxic effect of lowering housing supply in cities starved for rentals).
  - bradleyjg 9y ago
    Do you think the grandparent poster is renting a single room when he takes his family to Atlanta next week? Also, what percentage of AirBnB revenue do you think comes from single room rentals?
  - gordaco 9y ago
    The main externality is driving the price up and shrinking the pool of homes for actual residents who need to rent a place to live. This is already happening in some parts of the world. For example, people from Barcelona are starting to protest (see [1], and [2] by the way. In Spanish, sorry!). In my city, Málaga, it's starting to happen as well. I personally know a person who had to move out because the landlord wanted to use their flat for Airbnb. [1] https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2017/08/03/companias/1501774445_329587.html https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2017/08/03/companias/... [2] http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20170626/423707143344/directivo-airbnb-piso-ilegal-barcelona.html http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/barcelona/20170626/4237071...
    - 9y ago
bogomipz 9y ago
>"As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual." You realize that a "large corporation" employes lots of local people to maintain and operate that hotel right? Those same local people who are employed by that "large corporation" all contribute a portion of their paycheck to local and state tax coffers.