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Comment by jjmaxwell4 | Hacker News Reader

What about all of the good that AirBnB does for the large majority of people who use the site? Is there a deep ethical problem with letting people supplement their income, while also letting travellers have a cheaper option for a night/weeks stay?

The vast majority of people who use AirBnb benefit from it.

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"The vast majority of the people who use [it] benefit from it" is true of many products that are correctly removed from the market because of the size of the minority that suffer and the scale of their injury -- weighed against the benefit to other users and society as a whole.

More importantly, though, the scope of the risk of airbnb is enormous and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future success. As these two examples of bad experiences have shown, the system can be gamed. As a larger and larger number of bad guys learn that this system can be gamed (and how) -- exploits as a percentage of use and percentage of value received (insofar as you can quantify that) will, it seems to me, almost certainly grow.

AirBnB facilitates a set of behaviors that's almost never covered by normal homeowner/renters policies, along with being illegal in some places and against most rental contracts.

The only people who benefit are the guests, as any host who isn't using AirBnB to fill a rental property they already owned is taking on an incredible amount of personal liability for a relatively trivial sum of money (compared to the uninsured costs if something goes wrong).

In this regard, it is similar to driving. Vast majority benefits, but there are few who suffer greatly. The solution there is to regulate; introducing specific rules and making it illegal for people to drive unless they have a license. There is already a regulated hosting system: hotels; airbnb wants to change the system without keeping the regulations. I'd say they carry some responsibility here.

Being a liberitarian, I don't ever think the solution is to regulate; especially in this AirBnB case, where it is a mutual agreement between two people. Its different then driving, because only one of these two people can be hurt by the agreement. The onus to protect oneself should ultimetely rest with the owners/travelers.

I'm sure someone out there benefited from driving around in their Corvair with Firestone tires and a trunkful of lawn darts, too.

They were also fatally flawed products.

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