3 ms·

How is it not an externality that local communities in Lisbon, Barcelona, Venice (among many others), who work and used to live in the city, are being pushed ou

by piva00 4y ago

How is it not an externality that local communities in Lisbon, Barcelona, Venice (among many others), who work and used to live in the city, are being pushed out of their own cities purely by landlords renting out their properties on AirBnB instead of offering as housing. Emptying cities is not great for any part of society, not even for the tourists that are the driving force of this. Venice is a hollow city, there's very few real people anymore in the center. Lisbon has been suffering for years with ever-increasing rents mostly driven by tourism pricing out the local population. There might not be enough dwellings and the housing market is much more complex than this but it's an enormous externality on local populations that they don't get close to fair compensation compared to being kicked out from your home. How exactly is this not an externality? Luddites and looms is a very different issue than a necessity as basic as shelter. When you found an analogy related to food or water we can use it instead.

lmm 4y ago
> How is it not an externality that local communities in Lisbon, Barcelona, Venice (among many others), who work and used to live in the city, are being pushed out of their own cities purely by landlords renting out their properties on AirBnB instead of offering as housing. Increased demand pushing up the price is not an externality. > Venice is a hollow city, there's very few real people anymore in the center. And it contributes a lot more to overall human happiness that way. > Luddites and looms is a very different issue than a necessity as basic as shelter. When you found an analogy related to food or water we can use it instead. The Luddites were losing their whole livelihood - you can say all they lost was money, but without money they couldn't buy food or water or shelter. (Also, outside of a few climates cloth and clothes are every bit as much a basic human necessity as those)
- piva00 4y ago
  > And it contributes a lot more to overall human happiness that way. That's not the metric I look to optimise for, not sure why you believe I should take "overall human happiness" as the ultimate goal, some kind of weird min-maxing of real life, even less when dealing with things such as whole cities and communities, seems quite ideological to me. I really don't buy it.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Any coherent approach to morality min-maxes something. You either do it explicitly or you do it implicitly and make dumb mistakes; the only reason to do the latter is it lets you avoid thinking about the unpleasant parts of your worldview. The view implicitly underpinning "Venice for the Venetians" is "One of this handful of sophisticated upper-middle-class Europeans is morally worth far more than dozens or hundreds of boorish tourists"
    - piva00 4y ago
      > The view implicitly underpinning "Venice for the Venetians" is "One of this handful of sophisticated upper-middle-class Europeans is morally worth far more than dozens or hundreds of boorish tourists" Not at all, this is an oversimplification trying to equate and analyse a social issue in purely economical terms, which is inhumane and unempathetic. A place like Venice, or Lisbon, or Barcelona, so on and so forth, are only desirable exactly due to generations of people who lived there and built them up. You are trying to force a pure economical view on this issue which I completely disagree with. It's not that morally the residents of Venice are worth far more than tourists, it's that these places only became somewhere tourists would go due to the collective effort of generations of people who are now being forced out so some tourists can pass by, consume and part away with their money after a week. Leaving nothing else in its wake. Also, the people being pushed out are not the "upper-middle-class Europeans", those have the means to afford living in the city for longer than the poorer ones who are pushed out first, those poorer ones might be elderly, or low-income workers (such as is in Lisbon the past 5-8 years, and Barcelona maybe for longer) who might have been born and lived in those places until a rich landlord purchased a bunch of flats to rent out for 3-5 months of the year on AirBnB and make a buck. You destroy local communities to allow what? Some economical activity due to tourism and enrichment of a wealthy class. Yes, morally I believe that's wrong, you are min-maxing the return in purely economical terms to a class of people who in large part had no hand in creating what they are profiting from, indiscriminately hollowing out cities for pure profit-seeking motive with no regards for the social issues that will be created in 10-20 years for those people who are forced out just due to a lack of regulation of AirBnBs. The issue is not boorish tourists, the issue is allowing the rental market be completely distorted in favour of short-term rentals for a tourism industry that exists solely due to the generational work of whomever built those communities and cities, and who actually live there, day in and day out. If you don't believe this is fucked up I feel we have very different moral compasses...

by piva00 4y ago

lmm 4y ago

> How is it not an externality that local communities in Lisbon, Barcelona, Venice (among many others), who work and used to live in the city, are being pushed out of their own cities purely by landlords renting out their properties on AirBnB instead of offering as housing. Increased demand pushing up the price is not an externality. > Venice is a hollow city, there's very few real people anymore in the center. And it contributes a lot more to overall human happiness that way. > Luddites and looms is a very different issue than a necessity as basic as shelter. When you found an analogy related to food or water we can use it instead. The Luddites were losing their whole livelihood - you can say all they lost was money, but without money they couldn't buy food or water or shelter. (Also, outside of a few climates cloth and clothes are every bit as much a basic human necessity as those)

piva00 4y ago
> And it contributes a lot more to overall human happiness that way. That's not the metric I look to optimise for, not sure why you believe I should take "overall human happiness" as the ultimate goal, some kind of weird min-maxing of real life, even less when dealing with things such as whole cities and communities, seems quite ideological to me. I really don't buy it.
- lmm 4y ago
  Any coherent approach to morality min-maxes something. You either do it explicitly or you do it implicitly and make dumb mistakes; the only reason to do the latter is it lets you avoid thinking about the unpleasant parts of your worldview. The view implicitly underpinning "Venice for the Venetians" is "One of this handful of sophisticated upper-middle-class Europeans is morally worth far more than dozens or hundreds of boorish tourists"
  - piva00 4y ago
    > The view implicitly underpinning "Venice for the Venetians" is "One of this handful of sophisticated upper-middle-class Europeans is morally worth far more than dozens or hundreds of boorish tourists" Not at all, this is an oversimplification trying to equate and analyse a social issue in purely economical terms, which is inhumane and unempathetic. A place like Venice, or Lisbon, or Barcelona, so on and so forth, are only desirable exactly due to generations of people who lived there and built them up. You are trying to force a pure economical view on this issue which I completely disagree with. It's not that morally the residents of Venice are worth far more than tourists, it's that these places only became somewhere tourists would go due to the collective effort of generations of people who are now being forced out so some tourists can pass by, consume and part away with their money after a week. Leaving nothing else in its wake. Also, the people being pushed out are not the "upper-middle-class Europeans", those have the means to afford living in the city for longer than the poorer ones who are pushed out first, those poorer ones might be elderly, or low-income workers (such as is in Lisbon the past 5-8 years, and Barcelona maybe for longer) who might have been born and lived in those places until a rich landlord purchased a bunch of flats to rent out for 3-5 months of the year on AirBnB and make a buck. You destroy local communities to allow what? Some economical activity due to tourism and enrichment of a wealthy class. Yes, morally I believe that's wrong, you are min-maxing the return in purely economical terms to a class of people who in large part had no hand in creating what they are profiting from, indiscriminately hollowing out cities for pure profit-seeking motive with no regards for the social issues that will be created in 10-20 years for those people who are forced out just due to a lack of regulation of AirBnBs. The issue is not boorish tourists, the issue is allowing the rental market be completely distorted in favour of short-term rentals for a tourism industry that exists solely due to the generational work of whomever built those communities and cities, and who actually live there, day in and day out. If you don't believe this is fucked up I feel we have very different moral compasses...