This is where you and I will never come to an agreement:
You quickly jump to the government to regulate and essentially run every aspect of your life and the decisions you make.
I would argue that there is no place what-so-ever for government regulation in the market that AirBnB hosts' participate in. It is self regulating. If AirBnB is deceptive or unfair in their marketplace of listings, people will stop using it. If AirBnB is unfair to hosts, hosts will stop renting their place on AirBnB. If a place is not safe/sanitary/etc., and AirBnB still allows it to be listed, people will have a bad AirBnB experience and stop using AirBnB and/or that renter. AirBnB has the motivation to make all hosts follow a certain level of expectation to avoid the above. Otherwise AirBnB will go out of business. And with places that violate building regulations/etc., the city is already responsible for that, whether the host lives there themselves or rents it out.
And yes, it is as simple as a PRIVATE citizen renting out their location to another PRIVATE citizen. The fact that it is not my buddy sleeping on the couch but some stranger is up to the HOST. They have the freedom to choose if they want to rent their place out on the market place to a stranger or not. That is what is so great about a free market, it is NOT up to you or the GOVERNMENT. Same as any person has the choice to stay at an AirBnB or a hotel, or anything else they find...hell..go camping. The point here is that it is NOT the governments job to step in and not allow a choice that somebody is WILLING to make. Just because you may find AirBnB unfitting does not make it wrong and should not be illegal. Hotels have no business lobbying to ban this practice and it's indicative of them that they are not willing to even once sit down and think, how can we better serve and compete against the target market of AirBnB. It's pretty damn simple. I even listed above something they could look at. Other commentators have made the same point and other things the hotel industry could do. But no... what do they do... turn to the government. Government regulation is NOT the solution here. It is pretty sickening that so many people turn to government to regulate something at the first sign of something not being perfect.
I am legitimately curious, have you ever walked into a hotel room and it was disgusting? Did you immediately leave and complain to the hotel manager? Did you contact the city the hotel was in and tell them the hotel was not clean? Did you tell the city they should make more regulations on how a hotel should be?
OR, if you happen to go to a hotel that was not clean, or anything else that was not up to your standards of what a hotel should be. Did you stay there still? Did you ever come back to that hotel on another trip.
My point is YOU made a decision what to do based on what you were willing to pay. That is called a free market. Not a government regulates everything market. Other people may have been willing to stay in the hotel above at a given price.
> If a place is not safe/sanitary/etc., and AirBnB still allows it to be listed, people will have a bad AirBnB experience and stop using AirBnB and/or that renter.
Well that's one way to regulate a market. But those are soft regulations. You do those things because the market demands it.
There are not so soft regulations, these are done because the market wouldn't know enough about them to demand it. Like making sure the fire suppression system is actually installed, inspected, and functional. The fire exits aren't locked the wrong way. I assume you test each smoke detector in your rental before handing over money?
While you have a problem with regulations some of them don't bother me. I live near the beach. 50 years ago I wouldn't be allowed to set foot on it because of my skin. It seems silly now but the gov't came in with teeth and said, "hey what you are doing isn't right." The market was rewarding these hotels for being racist shitheels. Gov't regulation put a bullet in it.
You quickly jump to the government to regulate and essentially run every aspect of your life and the decisions you make.
I would argue that there is no place what-so-ever for government regulation in the market that AirBnB hosts' participate in. It is self regulating. If AirBnB is deceptive or unfair in their marketplace of listings, people will stop using it. If AirBnB is unfair to hosts, hosts will stop renting their place on AirBnB. If a place is not safe/sanitary/etc., and AirBnB still allows it to be listed, people will have a bad AirBnB experience and stop using AirBnB and/or that renter. AirBnB has the motivation to make all hosts follow a certain level of expectation to avoid the above. Otherwise AirBnB will go out of business. And with places that violate building regulations/etc., the city is already responsible for that, whether the host lives there themselves or rents it out.
And yes, it is as simple as a PRIVATE citizen renting out their location to another PRIVATE citizen. The fact that it is not my buddy sleeping on the couch but some stranger is up to the HOST. They have the freedom to choose if they want to rent their place out on the market place to a stranger or not. That is what is so great about a free market, it is NOT up to you or the GOVERNMENT. Same as any person has the choice to stay at an AirBnB or a hotel, or anything else they find...hell..go camping. The point here is that it is NOT the governments job to step in and not allow a choice that somebody is WILLING to make. Just because you may find AirBnB unfitting does not make it wrong and should not be illegal. Hotels have no business lobbying to ban this practice and it's indicative of them that they are not willing to even once sit down and think, how can we better serve and compete against the target market of AirBnB. It's pretty damn simple. I even listed above something they could look at. Other commentators have made the same point and other things the hotel industry could do. But no... what do they do... turn to the government. Government regulation is NOT the solution here. It is pretty sickening that so many people turn to government to regulate something at the first sign of something not being perfect.
I am legitimately curious, have you ever walked into a hotel room and it was disgusting? Did you immediately leave and complain to the hotel manager? Did you contact the city the hotel was in and tell them the hotel was not clean? Did you tell the city they should make more regulations on how a hotel should be?
OR, if you happen to go to a hotel that was not clean, or anything else that was not up to your standards of what a hotel should be. Did you stay there still? Did you ever come back to that hotel on another trip.
My point is YOU made a decision what to do based on what you were willing to pay. That is called a free market. Not a government regulates everything market. Other people may have been willing to stay in the hotel above at a given price.