4 ms·

Ok, well, thanks for answering. The comparison to Albuquerque makes no sense to me. We could as well guess that Airbnb is less safe than riding a roller coast

by dasht 15y ago

Ok, well, thanks for answering. The comparison to Albuquerque makes no sense to me. We could as well guess that Airbnb is less safe than riding a roller coaster at Disneyland -- so what? Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing. Because of its inherent structure, we can reasonably suspect that Airbnb is far, far riskier than current measurements yet show. I think of lots of nasty crimes that it facilitates and I'm sure you can as well. There is next to nothing in it that would prevent much higher rates of crime. It's structure is attractive to crime. The toll of the kinds of crime it is well suited for is incredibly high. Unless the basic model is significantly changed, none of those risks will go away or much diminish. Meanwhile the attractive potential for abuse of Airbnb is now well advertised to all potential criminals. I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms. It is as if the designers of this product want glibly to overturn common sense about how far to trust strangers and it wants to ignore the many rules and regulations that are designed to prevent precisely this kind of business activity -- all on the basis that "most people are basically good" or something. That's socially irresponsible engineering.

kragen 15y ago
> I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms. Your cultural and legal norms are stupid. They have no basis in reality. They are the product of scaremongering TV networks competing for advertising eyeballs with sensationalism. They have produced a society of isolation and paranoia where talking to strangers in the park is a faux pas, and suicide is a major cause of death. They kill people every day. They need to be destroyed. > Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing. On the contrary, comparison to a baseline is the only thing that would prove anything about riskiness. This single incident shows us that (a) apparently Airbnb is run by a bunch of insensitive and dishonest people, and (b) some people steal stuff and smash stuff up for fun. But we already knew (b). To make a judgment of whether Airbnb makes this kind of thing more or less likely, we need to know the baseline. Urban US society as a whole, not a sanitized amusement park, is the correct baseline to use. Albuquerque is reasonably representative of urban US society.
- dasht 15y ago
  Wow. It is "stupid" to be skeptical of handing over your home and access to your most valuable assets to relative strangers? It is "stupid" to isolate yourself in a non-public, unwatched space controlled by strangers? And one would only think otherwise because of TV? And the legal landscape here "has no basis in reality" in spite of the various laws and contracts that say otherwise? Wow.

by dasht 15y ago

kragen 15y ago

> I suppose what most greatly offends and alarms me about Airbnb is how sharply it diverges from very well established cultural and legal norms. Your cultural and legal norms are stupid. They have no basis in reality. They are the product of scaremongering TV networks competing for advertising eyeballs with sensationalism. They have produced a society of isolation and paranoia where talking to strangers in the park is a faux pas, and suicide is a major cause of death. They kill people every day. They need to be destroyed. > Those kinds of random comparisons prove nothing. On the contrary, comparison to a baseline is the only thing that would prove anything about riskiness. This single incident shows us that (a) apparently Airbnb is run by a bunch of insensitive and dishonest people, and (b) some people steal stuff and smash stuff up for fun. But we already knew (b). To make a judgment of whether Airbnb makes this kind of thing more or less likely, we need to know the baseline. Urban US society as a whole, not a sanitized amusement park, is the correct baseline to use. Albuquerque is reasonably representative of urban US society.

dasht 15y ago
Wow. It is "stupid" to be skeptical of handing over your home and access to your most valuable assets to relative strangers? It is "stupid" to isolate yourself in a non-public, unwatched space controlled by strangers? And one would only think otherwise because of TV? And the legal landscape here "has no basis in reality" in spite of the various laws and contracts that say otherwise? Wow.