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> Digital nomads building some pointless SaaS products with inflated egos Look we get it, you hate digital nomads and SaaS products. I couldn't really care les

> Digital nomads building some pointless SaaS products with inflated egos Look we get it, you hate digital nomads and SaaS products. I couldn't really care less, and that has nothing to do with anything I said, which is that local governments are responsible for their citizens. Whether it's AirBnB or Craigslist or Couchsurfing or some other website, there will always be a demand for people to find housing and to rent out spare housing. Villainify digital nomads or AirBnB, that's never going to solve the problem. (though part of me thinks you're more interested in venting about how much you hate "digital nomads" then actually thinking about the problem of affordable housing and what would could realistically be done to fix it).

deleted 6y ago
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matthewh806 6y ago
I don't really hate digital nomads, it was a deliberately flippant response to your comment in which I felt you expected the whole world to be your personal playground. I don't think it's really useful to put the blame squarely on the local government in Lisbon for example, sure perhaps they should take a share of it, but that doesn't exonerate exonerate Airbnb - far from it in fact. We're not "villainifying" Airbnb with baseless accusations - I've seen you comment elsewhere that if it wasn't Airbnb it would be some other company, that is terrible way to justify things. I do believe we should villainify them for circumventing and bending local laws (especially in a country which is in a different continent to where Airbnb is based...) to their advantage and to the detriment of the cities they're "disrupting". Just because something is not technically illegal or you can get away with it doesn't mean it's justified. I don't hate Airbnb either, though I am inherently distrustful of fast growing, power hungry & greedy "tech" companies and in fact have personally had positive experiences with it. I just don't think its as black & white as you're suggesting. Airbnb should be (and thankfully is) being held accountable for the damage its wreaked around the world. Local laws & regulations were perhaps not well enough equipped to deal with this new kind of tech behemoth and have been slow to adapt, but Airbnb didn't have to play the bad guy in violating zoning & short term stay regulations that the rest of the hospitality industry have to follow. But they did... knowingly. Someone else made the point that Airbnb was kind of like Trump, exposing & exploiting the existing weaknesses in a system to their own personal advantage. We don't point the finger squarely at the the system, yes it clearly failed under Trump and he is in some way just a symptom of more fundamental problems. But it doesn't let him off the hook. Neither should it for Airbnb Of course the aims of any private company are to maximise profits through whatever means necessary. That's just the world we live in unfortunately. But even if we accept that as a fact of life, it doesn't mean that on an ethical & moral level we should overlook the harm caused.

deleted 6y ago

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matthewh806 6y ago

I don't really hate digital nomads, it was a deliberately flippant response to your comment in which I felt you expected the whole world to be your personal playground. I don't think it's really useful to put the blame squarely on the local government in Lisbon for example, sure perhaps they should take a share of it, but that doesn't exonerate exonerate Airbnb - far from it in fact. We're not "villainifying" Airbnb with baseless accusations - I've seen you comment elsewhere that if it wasn't Airbnb it would be some other company, that is terrible way to justify things. I do believe we should villainify them for circumventing and bending local laws (especially in a country which is in a different continent to where Airbnb is based...) to their advantage and to the detriment of the cities they're "disrupting". Just because something is not technically illegal or you can get away with it doesn't mean it's justified. I don't hate Airbnb either, though I am inherently distrustful of fast growing, power hungry & greedy "tech" companies and in fact have personally had positive experiences with it. I just don't think its as black & white as you're suggesting. Airbnb should be (and thankfully is) being held accountable for the damage its wreaked around the world. Local laws & regulations were perhaps not well enough equipped to deal with this new kind of tech behemoth and have been slow to adapt, but Airbnb didn't have to play the bad guy in violating zoning & short term stay regulations that the rest of the hospitality industry have to follow. But they did... knowingly. Someone else made the point that Airbnb was kind of like Trump, exposing & exploiting the existing weaknesses in a system to their own personal advantage. We don't point the finger squarely at the the system, yes it clearly failed under Trump and he is in some way just a symptom of more fundamental problems. But it doesn't let him off the hook. Neither should it for Airbnb Of course the aims of any private company are to maximise profits through whatever means necessary. That's just the world we live in unfortunately. But even if we accept that as a fact of life, it doesn't mean that on an ethical & moral level we should overlook the harm caused.