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EU countries have a history of this kind of clumsy intervention in the market. The market is how we as a society value collectively decide which things are mor

EU countries have a history of this kind of clumsy intervention in the market. The market is how we as a society value collectively decide which things are more valuable than others. If hosting on Airbnb is more profitable than traditional rental in a given market, that means that Airbnb is the more valuable use of limited land and building space. Who are these anti-Airbnb activists to decide that they know better than the market what's important? Our prosperity as a society depends on allocating scarce resources to their "highest and best" uses. Banning economic activity on the grounds of badfeels makes us all worse off.

Dma54rhs 6y ago
It's true on paper, but you would fight against me starting pumping oil in your backyard because it's economically much more useful than you having a nice quiet family friendly neighborhood. Airbnb has its benefits but it skips most of the regulations, zoning laws, often taxes etc.
vidarh 6y ago
They are people living in these places who care more about being able to live there than the market value. The notion of prosperity measured only by who can afford to pay the most is one that would make most of us miserable, to the extent that we've over time increasingly restricted what you can your way out of because of the massive harm it does to people. Consider that your body parts are scarce resources. Do you think the prosperity of society depends on them going to the highest bidder?
- quotemstr 6y ago
  > They are people living in these places who care more about being able to live there than the market value. Then they can out-bid the Airbnb people. How much you pay is an expression of much you care. That's the whole point of having prices. Prices haven't done "harm" to people: they've given us the modern world!
  - foepys 6y ago
    Good joke. A retail worker outbidding a tourist who is prepared to spend a few hundreds on hotels for their yearly one week trip. Your strategy will only kill cities. Nobody but tourists and the very rich would be able to live there. Then the tourists would stop coming because everything is dirty and nobody sells anything, and then the city is dead.
  - vidarh 6y ago
    That would be a reasonable argument if we were all mostly unconstrained in terms of amount of money. In practice most people do not have the ability to express how much they care. Often they are instead directly harmed by high prices in terms of being forced out of communities they can no longer live in, or suffer lengthy commutes etc.. We can not accommodate the needs of everyone perfectly, but in a democracy we certainly can allow people to set rules for how their community should function in ways that seeks to balance different considerations. Votes are an expression of how much people care too. That's the whole point of having votes. I have also never once come across this argument without it turning out that the person making it have not thought it through or are disingenuous. Pretty much nobody wants all constraints taken away and everything left to the free market. Put another way: If I bought all the land around your place and denied you passage, you'd starve to death soon enough. Or I could just store open vats of toxic chemicals on the neighbouring property. Or a million other things that we regulate away because society have seen the harm that allowing price to control everything does.
  - matkoniecz 6y ago
    > Then they can out-bid the Airbnb people. How much you pay is an expression of much you care. Are you aware that some countries are poor? And people living there will be unable to pay as much as tourist from USA?
baby 6y ago
Interesting take, in some sense I guess AirBnB is gentrification.

Dma54rhs 6y ago

It's true on paper, but you would fight against me starting pumping oil in your backyard because it's economically much more useful than you having a nice quiet family friendly neighborhood. Airbnb has its benefits but it skips most of the regulations, zoning laws, often taxes etc.

vidarh 6y ago

They are people living in these places who care more about being able to live there than the market value. The notion of prosperity measured only by who can afford to pay the most is one that would make most of us miserable, to the extent that we've over time increasingly restricted what you can your way out of because of the massive harm it does to people. Consider that your body parts are scarce resources. Do you think the prosperity of society depends on them going to the highest bidder?

quotemstr 6y ago
> They are people living in these places who care more about being able to live there than the market value. Then they can out-bid the Airbnb people. How much you pay is an expression of much you care. That's the whole point of having prices. Prices haven't done "harm" to people: they've given us the modern world!
- foepys 6y ago
  Good joke. A retail worker outbidding a tourist who is prepared to spend a few hundreds on hotels for their yearly one week trip. Your strategy will only kill cities. Nobody but tourists and the very rich would be able to live there. Then the tourists would stop coming because everything is dirty and nobody sells anything, and then the city is dead.
- vidarh 6y ago
  That would be a reasonable argument if we were all mostly unconstrained in terms of amount of money. In practice most people do not have the ability to express how much they care. Often they are instead directly harmed by high prices in terms of being forced out of communities they can no longer live in, or suffer lengthy commutes etc.. We can not accommodate the needs of everyone perfectly, but in a democracy we certainly can allow people to set rules for how their community should function in ways that seeks to balance different considerations. Votes are an expression of how much people care too. That's the whole point of having votes. I have also never once come across this argument without it turning out that the person making it have not thought it through or are disingenuous. Pretty much nobody wants all constraints taken away and everything left to the free market. Put another way: If I bought all the land around your place and denied you passage, you'd starve to death soon enough. Or I could just store open vats of toxic chemicals on the neighbouring property. Or a million other things that we regulate away because society have seen the harm that allowing price to control everything does.
- matkoniecz 6y ago
  > Then they can out-bid the Airbnb people. How much you pay is an expression of much you care. Are you aware that some countries are poor? And people living there will be unable to pay as much as tourist from USA?

baby 6y ago

Interesting take, in some sense I guess AirBnB is gentrification.