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At least, with the finance industry, those entities are directly perpetrating and in control of the immoral behavior, rather than acting as a proxy/facilitator

At least, with the finance industry, those entities are directly perpetrating and in control of the immoral behavior, rather than acting as a proxy/facilitator for entities that might be doing it. I would think this situation is more akin to hosting copyrighted content, where we're finding that service providers aren't held liable (morally or legally) as long as they comply with requests to take down specific offending material. As a side note, look how often that criticism of the finance industry amounts to any real effect on those companies. If that's the model we're looking at, the prevailing wisdom says to just do it and ignore the critics. Also I think most people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential lease agreements (compared to, say, the global economy), and those are easier to amend and negotiate on than laws.

Spooky23 12y ago
That's really splitting hairs. It's pretty obvious that turning an apartment into a hotel room is a legal problem in many if not most instances. Making the claim that "people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential leases" is just plain delusional. You'll get concerned when your lease gets terminated or the HOA takes up action against you. The whole situation is a moral hazard -- the owner/lessee of the apartment/house bears almost all of the risks. AirBnB just needs to keep the PR machine churning. That's why they have figured out how to verify the identity of renters (to address the issue of some sort of psycho serial killer renting rooms), but still find it impossible to confirm that lessees of property can in fact rent those rooms.
7Figures2Commas 12y ago
You seem to be of the belief that a) financial institutions never play the limited role of facilitator and b) entities which facilitate transactions are somehow less culpable when they know that the transactions they are facilitating are ethically questionable. You're wrong on both counts. Many financial institutions facilitate transactions. Goldman Sachs paid over half a billion dollars to settle charges related to the Abacus deal it facilitated in 2007.[1] Goldman was paid a $15 million fee for facilitating that deal, a meaningless fraction of the $46 billion in revenues it earned in 2007. As I noted, the vast majority of apartment leases forbid subletting without the landlord's approval, and you would be hard pressed to find a single landlord who allows tenants to turn their apartments into hotel suites. As such, one could argue that as far as apartments go, this isn't a "might" proposition. There's a very reasonable argument to be made that AirBnB can safely assume that apartment listings on its site more often than not involve a tenant breaking the terms of his or her lease. If you don't have a problem with AirBnB facilitating apartment rentals in the face of constructive knowledge that many of them are taking place in violation of the terms of the host's lease, that's fine. But then you shouldn't have a problem with financial institutions when they merely facilitate transactions that don't pass your smell test. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? [1] http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/goldman-sachs-and-the-abacus-deal http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/goldman-sachs-...
- knowtheory 12y ago
  Well the hilarious part is that AirBnB now requires guests to prove who they are by posting a passport. It wouldn't be rocket science to require hosts to prove that they have ownership or approval to let out their flats (i mean, you can look up property ownership info online for most US cities). Especially since, from the host's perspective it's not a 1 time transaction. They're just skirting the law because it's convenient.
- vvvv 12y ago
  From the perspective of a home owner, if I rented my flat out, I'd definitely include a no subletting clause. I'd also love to have a way to temporarily blacklist my property on AirBnB and other such sites.

Spooky23 12y ago

That's really splitting hairs. It's pretty obvious that turning an apartment into a hotel room is a legal problem in many if not most instances. Making the claim that "people just aren't that concerned about the sanctity of HOAs and residential leases" is just plain delusional. You'll get concerned when your lease gets terminated or the HOA takes up action against you. The whole situation is a moral hazard -- the owner/lessee of the apartment/house bears almost all of the risks. AirBnB just needs to keep the PR machine churning. That's why they have figured out how to verify the identity of renters (to address the issue of some sort of psycho serial killer renting rooms), but still find it impossible to confirm that lessees of property can in fact rent those rooms.

7Figures2Commas 12y ago

You seem to be of the belief that a) financial institutions never play the limited role of facilitator and b) entities which facilitate transactions are somehow less culpable when they know that the transactions they are facilitating are ethically questionable. You're wrong on both counts. Many financial institutions facilitate transactions. Goldman Sachs paid over half a billion dollars to settle charges related to the Abacus deal it facilitated in 2007.[1] Goldman was paid a $15 million fee for facilitating that deal, a meaningless fraction of the $46 billion in revenues it earned in 2007. As I noted, the vast majority of apartment leases forbid subletting without the landlord's approval, and you would be hard pressed to find a single landlord who allows tenants to turn their apartments into hotel suites. As such, one could argue that as far as apartments go, this isn't a "might" proposition. There's a very reasonable argument to be made that AirBnB can safely assume that apartment listings on its site more often than not involve a tenant breaking the terms of his or her lease. If you don't have a problem with AirBnB facilitating apartment rentals in the face of constructive knowledge that many of them are taking place in violation of the terms of the host's lease, that's fine. But then you shouldn't have a problem with financial institutions when they merely facilitate transactions that don't pass your smell test. What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right? [1] http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/goldman-sachs-and-the-abacus-deal http://sevenpillarsinstitute.org/case-studies/goldman-sachs-...

knowtheory 12y ago
Well the hilarious part is that AirBnB now requires guests to prove who they are by posting a passport. It wouldn't be rocket science to require hosts to prove that they have ownership or approval to let out their flats (i mean, you can look up property ownership info online for most US cities). Especially since, from the host's perspective it's not a 1 time transaction. They're just skirting the law because it's convenient.
vvvv 12y ago
From the perspective of a home owner, if I rented my flat out, I'd definitely include a no subletting clause. I'd also love to have a way to temporarily blacklist my property on AirBnB and other such sites.