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by subject4056 384 days ago
I don't think it's right that Airbnb solved short term rentals - outside of a few dozens prestige markets that they monitor with humans, it's really a race to the bottom. Reputation at scale remains unsolved, and so it's still a market for lemons.
1 comments

Quite relevant to this question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

Akerlof's paper uses the market for used cars as an example of the problem of quality uncertainty. It concludes that owners of high-quality used cars will not place their cars on the used car market. A car buyer should only be able to buy low-quality used cars, and will pay accordingly as the market for good used cars does not exist.