I can't for the life of me understand why you're being downvoted. Other than your clear opinions, your analysis is spot on. This sums it up: > It's an approach

I can't for the life of me understand why you're being downvoted. Other than your clear opinions, your analysis is spot on. This sums it up: > It's an approach used by a lot of companies that I've started to think of as "societal strip mining". AirBnB is making it's money by offloading costs of business that it should rightfully pay itself to random other people around it, and pocketing the difference. How can anyone disagree with that? That paragraph is pretty obviously true _regardless_ of whether you like or dislike Airbnb. They are quite obviously taking advantage of the economic conditions (and lack of enforcement of many laws) and engaging in a form of indirect arbitrage of the housing stock. It makes perfect business sense and you may even think it's good, but doesn't make the quoted paragraph and less true. I'm not sure exactly where I stand with this in the big picture, but quotes like "You're simply demonstrating NIMBYism." are as overly simplistic. You could just as easily say the users of Airbnb are "simply demonstrating selfishness" in their taking advantage of places _not_ meant to be hotels.