>Uber and AirBnB changed the status quo far more than any politician in my lifetime.
I am sorry, but that is just depressing if you believe something like that. The ACA is one thing that comes to mind. Improving healthcare for Americans would have a much bigger impact on people's lives than giving people who already own a home a way to make a little extra money.
> Airbnb has been a negative influence on the housing market
airbnb exposed the fact the societies are full of nimbys and politicians are useless. all while providing a good alternative to hotels.
> Uber, well, do I even need to discuss that one?
uber is amazing. it completely undercut the monopolies of the taxi companies. it provides an amazing service at a reasonable price.
> our centuries old nemesis: Capitalism.
you're referring to the the biggest driver of wealth, education and health in the history of humanity as a nemesis? humans are, right now, the richest, most educated and healthiest they have ever been in their short history on this planet, and that is due to capital first and foremost.
> But, he said, “the concept of ownership is changing drastically and very quickly. We used to think that we needed cars, and now we have Lyft and Uber and Car2Go. We used to need homes, and now we have Airbnb.”
Does anyone use Airbnb instead of owning a home? For me, Airbnb is a competitor to hotels, not home ownership.
> Uber and airbnb created value using technology by solving many pain points of consumers.
I don’t think this is as the USP airbnb was going for.
Companies like Booking.com, trifago.com and Hotel.com existed prior to airbnb and had a pretty decent “human-less” UX.
I thought the usp of airbnb was that everyone with a place could rent it out on that platform. That should increase the supply. It worked pretty well for a while and still does so to a certain extend. Regulations make its service useless in some countries though.
I’m not sure what Uber did to improve the market but they’ve always been dearer than taxies where I’m from. I don’t mind giving a taxi central a call either…
> airbnb is the only one i can think of that is something im actually glad exists
If you leave aside the fact that it destroyed housing in many cities, like the one I live in. A handful of landlords got richer, turists could travel cheaper (not necessarily a good thing overall), but an entire class of citizens got kicked out of the city as now no landlord wants to regularly rent their flat.
If you ask for disruption, that's what you get. When you disrupt a market, you also disrupt many lives, even indirectly.
> You know, I don't particularly like the "sharing economy" movement. The whole thing seems predicated on deregulation of industries that I honestly think should be regulated.
I mostly agree with you but I think the sharing economy is something that needs to happen in a better regulated way. Let's face it, wage growth is stagnant and the only way the average person is able to improve their financial situation is to be more efficient. [e.g. sharing cars, renting out spare rooms, moonlighting as an Uber driver]
My main problem with Uber is the fact it isn't paying the same tax rates to the local government as the Taxi companies.
My main problem with AirBnb is they don't even bother with building an address list to filter out apartment complexes [almost all of which don't allow subleasing in the US] & condos [ditto]. They need to do that and require a copy of the person's lease to be on file with them showing they can sublease, etc.
> Do you know what they all have in common? Taking advantage of people's weak economic situation.
I don't agree with this characterization. If anything, these companies provided a way to extract value from under-utilized assets. For example, most people in the US have a car anyway. It's required. It's not a luxury. Taking Uber as the example, to work as a taxi driver previously required you to do strict shifts in a car that very much looks like a cab (that you may not own anyway). While many Uber drivers do it full time, some don't and some started off part-time because that was an option.
I'm more critical of AirBnB as I think the communities around AirBnBs suffer the externalities as people essentially run unregulated hotels. I'm not a fan of that at all.
> Is that an externality of AirBnB or poor city planning?
I'd say both. Poor city planning leads to it happening, but AirBnB exacerbates the problem. And for a politician, regulating AirBnB is much easier and a lot more understandable by the electorate.
Explaining how they should be reelected because of changes they made to fundamental housing policy that will take 30 years to materialize is a hard sell.
> Airbnb is by all accounts a wildly successful company
I remember 5 years ago when I turned down a lucrative offer from Uber because I just didn't believe in the company. People told me I was crazy, that Uber was the future of transportation, and how could I not understand how stupid I was? I just looked the fundamentals and said it will never make money.
AirBnB and Uber are very different companies, the most notable difference being that AirBnB actually makes money. That said, AirBnB has lots of issues to be worked out before I would consider them a "wildly successful company" in the sense that they are not doing remotely as well as they should be considering how many years their competition was paying regulatory taxes and they weren't. Based on anecdotal evidence, their dark patterns are making their users grow to hate them more every day (not a great sign before an IPO) and they're making weird moves in the hotel space - that industry they were supposed to replace instead of become. And now they have real competition from HomeAway and others and I just don't see a growth trajectory for them anymore - honestly I see them shrinking in a few years. The fact that it took them until 2017 to generate a profit in a space where they own nothing, rent nothing, and have no expensive infrastructure in an enormous market where they didn't pay competitive taxes (but managed to win a local election despite this clusterfuck https://slate.com/business/2015/11/airbnb-defeats-prop-f-in-...) is a fucking alarm bell. More cities across the world are starting to ban their service, and laws are being created to actually enforce this. I am certain if this comment gets seen by many people I will get replies telling me why AirBnB is healthy, and all is well, and I just don't understand - just like I did all those years ago with Uber.
I'm not convinced AirBnB is going to exist in 10 years (for many more reasons than I listed in the paragraph above). Maybe I'm wrong. But until AirBnB is a public company for ~6 months and we can see their financials, watch the stock price fluctuate, and see how many people jump ship the moment their equity vests...well it's just another unicorn story where the VCs are pumping up the price to dump the stock.
> On one hand, people should have the ability to do what they want with properties they own.
Hard disagree. Society did indeed already decide otherwise, hence why short term rentals are regulated in the first place. Airbnb has made its money helping people circumvent those laws… the Uber of housing. I’m surprised it’s taking so long for cities to react.
Just to be clear, I don't. I'm a homeowner whose home value would be hurt by measures like these, but I support them anyway. I think it would be hard to pull off, but the country would be better off if landlordship/non-primary homes were heavily taxed or banned altogether.
In that vein, I see Airbnb as a cancer on society that is among the most evil and harmful companies that no one realizes is having the effect that it's having.
> I think AirBnB would be a force to help people keep their housing, driving rents up but allowing people flexibility to generate more income if they are falling back.
Until it becomes the new normal, and market rents will factor that in. Then, people who, for whatever reason, cannot rent half their apartment out on AirBnB will just be priced out.
> AirBnB and Uber are both examples of companies that were huge wins for customers/consumers.
And for its shareholders, so is a factory dumping heavy metals to the nearby river. And for its customers, so is a slave plantation.
You judge businesses by the treatment of all participants of an economic activity, not just the ones giving and receiving money. Uber and AirBnB are examples of companies that shit on society at large to provide better service to some small fraction of it. In a civilized world, there's no place for this, which is why it saddens me deeply that they're still around.
I think it already started. If you sublet your apartment you are either a landlord or a hotel service, and have to follow all the safety/fire/health/ regulations for one of those. It's pretty obvious you aren't supposed to be allowed to just "share" your apartment for a fee, where some startup unicorn takes a nice cut because they cornered the market with a web site.
So yes. Uber and AirBnB are innovators in the sense that they aggresively invade legal gray areas. I think they will fundamentally change markets (e.g. will cause taxi monopolies to be removed, or reduce the red tape hotel businesses) - but they won't exist in a decade doing what they do now.
> Efficiency improvements are always good for society as a whole, despite it hurting some people who originally was paid due to the inefficiency.
When the economic/capital/wealth 1% end up hoarding all the profitability gains, society as a whole loses. I have come to loathe the term "disruption" as it has always meant externalizing costs to make a quick buck: either by technology replacing actual, real humans with real families who now have to struggle to survive or by breaking laws and regulations like Uber and AirBnB did, with society paying the costs associated with that - in the case of Uber, society picked up the tab for underinsured drivers or for their pension/social security contributions which don't apply for "freelancers", and in the case of AirBnB all the neighbors affected by the noise and literal other disruptions an AirBnB brings with it.
> Using AirBNB (or equivalent service) saved me well over $1500 for the trip - we would have needed three hotel rooms but rented a house instead.
Travel and entertainment is not one of life's necessities. It doesn't outweigh the negative impact of airbnb.
> As an added bonus, instead of all that money going to a large corporation, it will go to an individual.
Why in the world does that matter at all? Are you saying that you have not received any upside from interacting over the years with 'a large corporation'? And that they have no value? Or that you think it just makes you a better person because your money went to an individual as if you have just donated to a person or charity in need?
> The problem is, of course, that it increases rental profiteering, and that it caters to rich international tourists, not residents.
If I have a property, I can choose to let someone stay at my property for money. AirBnB facilitates this. This makes my property valuable as a result. The homeowners benefit as do people who need a place to stay. This is progress and occurs any time anyone creates a product or technology that creates value. What pathologies? Homes rightly appreciating in value due to a new revenue stream opened up for homeowners?
I am sorry, but that is just depressing if you believe something like that. The ACA is one thing that comes to mind. Improving healthcare for Americans would have a much bigger impact on people's lives than giving people who already own a home a way to make a little extra money.
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