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Nature finds a way. The free market is the little green shoots growing up between the cracks of the grey statist utopian paved earth. Technology is allowing i

Nature finds a way. The free market is the little green shoots growing up between the cracks of the grey statist utopian paved earth. Technology is allowing innovators to outpace the entitled dullards that inhabit the halls of political privilege. They'll shut this down, with all you fine citizens celebrating, but the innovators will route around it again.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago
People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do. That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices. Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price) We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward in a society packed full of other selfish Great Apes with weapons. It works - we are living proof. It can always be improved, but almost always a market failure in the western world is down to some greedy bastard somewhere breaking the rules to obtain an advantage and not getting shutdown fast enough.
- gambiting 12y ago
  airbnb makes money off private property and I cannot possibly see how renting your own house to someone would be called stealing. This app makes money of public property, and that is where the difference is - it's as if you were auctioning off your place in a homeless shelter, if you want to stick to the AirBnB reference.
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    A "large proportion" of airbnb is sub-letting - either a flat for a week while away, a room for months or other types banned in the original lease contract. Even some people who own their own leasehold in the uk don't have rental rights. The BBC estimated that was 40% of rentals on airbnb - it is my contention that airbnb is doing a YouTube - basing its growth on breaches of copyright / lease law whilst hoping to grow big enough fast enough for it to not matter. I think a better analogy is ticket touting - you buy a ticket at the baseball game and then sell the seat again, leaving when the next buyer turns up. And you only buy at "public good" rates and sell at "market rates" This app would also go out of business if SF city sold parking places at market rates - there would be no margin. In all, it's a silly app trying to create an after market in something where they and their customers have no legal rights and no practical enforcement, and I think they were hoping to scrape enough and not get noticed.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

People making money out of someone else's property is what this app and airbnb do. That's not a clever hack or capitalism finding a way - that's stealing and hoping no one notices. Regulation at its core is a vital part of a free market (and by the way the only free part we really care about is freedom to set a price) We regulate murder, kidnap, extortion and parking bye-laws. We do that so we can all move forward in a society packed full of other selfish Great Apes with weapons. It works - we are living proof. It can always be improved, but almost always a market failure in the western world is down to some greedy bastard somewhere breaking the rules to obtain an advantage and not getting shutdown fast enough.

gambiting 12y ago
airbnb makes money off private property and I cannot possibly see how renting your own house to someone would be called stealing. This app makes money of public property, and that is where the difference is - it's as if you were auctioning off your place in a homeless shelter, if you want to stick to the AirBnB reference.
- lifeisstillgood 12y ago
  A "large proportion" of airbnb is sub-letting - either a flat for a week while away, a room for months or other types banned in the original lease contract. Even some people who own their own leasehold in the uk don't have rental rights. The BBC estimated that was 40% of rentals on airbnb - it is my contention that airbnb is doing a YouTube - basing its growth on breaches of copyright / lease law whilst hoping to grow big enough fast enough for it to not matter. I think a better analogy is ticket touting - you buy a ticket at the baseball game and then sell the seat again, leaving when the next buyer turns up. And you only buy at "public good" rates and sell at "market rates" This app would also go out of business if SF city sold parking places at market rates - there would be no margin. In all, it's a silly app trying to create an after market in something where they and their customers have no legal rights and no practical enforcement, and I think they were hoping to scrape enough and not get noticed.