"I have a right to do everything that's not actually illegal" is an attitude that directly results in all kinds of trivial things being banned. In this case, it's leading to cities trying to ban or restrict AirBNB.
Depends on your definition. Here in Switzerland, the expectations go as far as aksing you NOT to use toilets after a reasonable hour in the evening because the sound through the water pipes can disturb people. Now, it's not as draconian as it sounds, and from time to time you are welcome to use the toilet, obviously.
Similarly, in some villages, you are NOT welcome to tear down an old building and build a modern monstrosity in its place. Facade changes often need to be approved by the local authorities. The advantage is that villages look more homogeneous and thus more beautiful.
On the one hand, such a society means the Swiss will sometimes call the cops if you're noisy, or if you parked your car wrong etc. And it DOES get infuriating no doubt.
However, such things tend to load to a society where everyone has a baseline level of self-awareness and sensitivity towards those around you. It translates to all sort of good things like the 'zipper' approach to intersections, where you let someone in, and then the next car lets you in, and the virtuous cycle continues.
Ultimately, if I had to choose, I'd much prefer such a seciety, even if it errs on too much strictness. The quality of life is amazing.
Sure. There's an escalation process in this; going round to ask people not to do something. But if that doesn't work? Or results in aggression? Or actual violence? Or, because of the character of the neigbourhood and people's fears, they worry it might? People turn to the police to mediate their disputes.
And the problem with AirBnb is that every new set of guests re-rolls the dice on how they're likely to react.
Except that generally doesn't happen, and illegal AirBnB sublets absolutely do deserve to be reported to police in every single instance, because they're instances of antisocial individual behavior coordinated by a multinational corporation that profits off it.
Your wording is a little over the top but I generally agree.
You know how many fucks I give about my neighbor's power tools at odd hours or my other neighbor's loud birds or my other neighbor who's always smoking weed, or my other neighbor who's always getting loud and drunk with his buddies and all the other things people around me do that some find disagreeable?
Zero.
Those things are what a free society sounds and smells like. The people who want everyone around them to abide by an upper middle class standard of behavior where everyone keeps their lawn just the right height, ensures non-running cars are parked out of view and (practically) never makes any noise can move to an upper middle class neighborhood.
Edit:
I'm being serious. People need to care less what their neighbors do. Caring what your neighbors do and slowly codifying that over time is what gave us the affordable and walk-able utopias of SF, LA, DMV, etc.
I have lived in probably 15 apartments and never ran into one neighbor I couldn't handle, and you somehow have 3 at once? I would say that the problem is probably you. If not, and you have just hit the bad neighbor lottery, you are free to do what I have done so many times and move.
> "I have a right to do everything that's not actually illegal" is an attitude that directly results in all kinds of trivial things being banned.
You say that, like it's something surprising. A Priori, a person will do anything as long as it does not violate his own self imposed code of conduct.
That code of conduct need not be the same for everyone.
Laws, religion, moral codes are used to codify parts that are shared by a group of people.
In a civil state, the only part that you can force people to abide to, is that of the law in the general sense. (because they have a right to have a different religion, different moral doctorines etc..).
of course, people can self impose stricter rules on themselves but they can't impose rules stricter than the law on others.
> In this case, it's leading to cities trying to ban or restrict AirBNB
yeah, they can. I agree with you here. And I'm sure there is many valid reasons to do so.
My point is noise,in my opinion, is not one.
Inacceptable levels of noise should be banned regardless of the type of the rental contract.
for example, increased demand on housing making long term renting too expensive, is a valid one. Because it's a necessary result of airbnb.
My general point of view, is that one should ban / disadvantage X because of undesirable property Y, only if Y is an essential property/consequence of X.
I like this principal because it's general enough to be equivalent to "one shouldn't punish the innocent"
and prohibition of racism directly follows from it.
The point is that "acceptable levels of noise" depends on frequency of high noise levels, not just volume on a given instance. I accept that my neighbors use a chainsaw on occasion, and they accepted it just fine when I used a jackhammer in the garden to break up some concrete, despite very high volume in both cases, it happens so rarely that it's fine.
But far lower volume noise every evening would be far more disruptive.
You can get that with long term renters too, but typically it tends to be a bigger problem with certain types of use, such as vacation rentals, than others, and with long term renters you have more ability to try to resolve the issue before someone new moves in.
In this case increased average noise level is an observable property of short term/vacation rentals in a lot of locations. If the people renting out does not want it to be banned, then it is on them to ensure the people they rent to are considerate enough that residents are happy for it to continue.