[carapace]

Or are they eroding laws and customs built up and evolved over time to manage complicated situations without clear-cut solutions in order that they can extract wealth and feed off society without contributing value? Frankly, I see both of those companies as parasites.

[rakoo]

If they really didn't contribute any value we wouldn't be talking about them, they'd have died a long time ago.

[carapace]

That is such a foolish statement I hesitate to reply. I use the term "parasite", do parasites die out?

Really the point hinges on your definition of "value". I don't credit these particular companies with adding any particular value to the domains in which they operate, and they are arguably degrading the local economic environments where they operate.

Part of my umbrage with airbnb in particular is personal: I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I am looking for a new place to live. In the past I've used Craigslist for a long time with very good results, but these days it's very obvious that opportunistic landlords have colluded with airbnb to turn quite a lot of available rental spaces into poorly-managed quasi-hotels.

There are important reasons why we don't allow ourselves to e.g. drive and operate illicit taxis, or run unregulated hotels. We have, collectively, thousands of years of experience with letting to lodgers and hiring porters and carriages, etc.

If you got in your car and started driving people around for money, that's not legal. If you started a hotel in your spare bedroom, that's not legal. Just adding computers doesn't make it legal. Calling it "disruption" doesn't make it legal or right. These companies are criminals, they are extracting money and degrading the domains they operate in, and (as Airbnb's recent appalling ad campaign demonstrates) they are fully up their own asses when it comes to owning up to the consequences of their behaviour.

With any luck at all they will "die" soon and we won't be talking about them anymore.