I'm pretty sick of celebrating AirBnB. They create so many classic externalities problems and are doing basically nothing to address them despite simple solutions being available, like allowing people to look up addresses and file complaints without being a customer (ie: neighbors of AirBnB owners that are adversely affected). It's obvious why they don't do this: they know there are tons of illegal listings that would immediately be identified and pulled down, and they know that's a significant amount of their business.
This doesn't even begin to address the legalities of subleasing, the negative real estate market effects for residents, etc. all of which AirBnB chooses to paper over with ads about how they are helping poor people get additional sources of income.
We should be careful trusting them in having a significant role in our real estate system. As a company they behave irrationally and their values, outside of growth at all costs, are shallow, and as a country real estate provides a huge amount of our economic backbone. We're all still really mad at the bankers about the last economic recession, do we want to blame the next one on the tech companies?
AirBnB: fix your existing marketplace and show that you can run a proper, legal business before expanding.
This doesn't even begin to address the legalities of subleasing, the negative real estate market effects for residents, etc. all of which AirBnB chooses to paper over with ads about how they are helping poor people get additional sources of income.
We should be careful trusting them in having a significant role in our real estate system. As a company they behave irrationally and their values, outside of growth at all costs, are shallow, and as a country real estate provides a huge amount of our economic backbone. We're all still really mad at the bankers about the last economic recession, do we want to blame the next one on the tech companies?
AirBnB: fix your existing marketplace and show that you can run a proper, legal business before expanding.