[tedmiston]

To substitute a p2p car sharing service in place of car rental agency completely changes the meaning...

Driving a vehicle (your own or renting someone else's) is an activity requiring a license for the agency to validate.

I'm unaware of any place in the world requiring a license to sleep and eat breakfast.

[dap]

> I'm unaware of any place in the world requiring a license to sleep and eat breakfast.

This was the third Google hit for "are hotels licensed": http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/hr/Servicesthatrequirea...

Restaurants, too: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/eh/Food/Permits/default.asp

Anyway, it's a completely bogus assumption that licensing is only about ensuring competence.

[tedmiston]

I said [of the guest]: "to sleep and eat breakfast"

Not [of the host]: to provide a place to sleep and serve breakfast.

The article's analogy uses rental agency <--> customer.

[mangeletti]

It's the hosts they're talking about, not the guests, which would need licenses.

I'm fairly sure you have to have a license to serve breakfast as a business. You also have to be inspected by the health department. Same goes for running a hotel. That stuff all costs money, and it's not up to a private business (AirBnB) to determine how to enforce such laws, even though their existence does change the landscape.

[tedmiston]

It seems my phrasing was unclear. With "to sleep and eat breakfast", my intent was: a customer to sleep somewhere and eat breakfast there (as the end user), not for a business to serve that customer.

I made this point to the article's literal analogy of the car rental agency's need to validate a consumer to drive a car (as the end user). There is no license needed to sleep and breakfast.

[mangeletti]

You're phrasing was clear. The person making the analogy was comparing the drivers to the hosts.