Never used Airbnb but it looks pretty cool. I have used Uber -- and I love the concept of free people making side deals with property/time they have to earn a

Never used Airbnb but it looks pretty cool. I have used Uber -- and I love the concept of free people making side deals with property/time they have to earn a little extra cash. Been going on forever. Likely will continue. With or without some kind of community oversight. Which brings me to my point: must we always be swinging one way or another on a pendulum? For the vast majority of transactions, it seems like we've solved this for both sides of the transaction, buyer and seller. The remaining piece is negative externalities. Part of the problem here is that most anything you do in life is going to have some sort of negative externalities, the only thing that changes is the magnitude -- much the same concept as anything you consume is a poison, the only thing that changes is the dosage. It just seems that the scales will always be tipped against guys like Airbnb or Uber. If a million people rent an Airbnb apartment and one person gets killed or raped? Headlines will say "Airbnb leads to killing and rape on the east side!" If the same numbers happen in a hotel? No headlines. So even as a libertarian I'm in favor of some reasonable kind of accommodation between banning and complete laizzez faire. The problem is that I've yet to see anyone define "reasonable" in a way that doesn't sound like a knee-jerk reaction. And let's face it, these kinds of transactions will continue no matter how many city councils vote them down. The problem needs a public airing and 100 possible solutions tried. I'm sure one will work. Perhaps some sort of insurance with all risk factors made public? Neighbor rents out his apartment as an Airbnb and partygoers destroy your yard? File a claim. You get your yard back, Airbnb has somebody who handles these problems, and the neighbor's insurance rates go up. We see this a lot with driving: the ticket isn't much of a concern for folks, but the rising insurance rates hurt for a long time afterwards.