[larsonf]

I read this and kept thinking whether the hotel lobby is really the reason why Airbnb runs into trouble. Or, for that matter, even whether the Taxi Lobby is what is really hitting Uber.

Yes, hotel owners and taxi drivers are not exactly pleased about the disruption. And, yes, they have lobbyists to further their causes. But don't think for one second that these people wanted the regulation to begin with. Absolutely not. The regulators wanted to protect the public and put in zoning, licensing, etc. The initial regulation had very little, if anything, to do with turn-of-the-century lobbyists.

For the most part it seems these new companies are facing not some nuanced part of the law, but like basic, prehistoric regulation that is practically universal in the Western world, designed to protect people from surpassingly likely horrible practices--like getting kidnapped by an unlicensed driver. Something not that unimaginable -- at least according to London public service posters everywhere. Some laws have very murky reasoning, I'll give you that. But zoning and licensing in these cases do not. So to say that Cities are stifling innovation by enforcing some of the most basic laws of the modern state, then it's a bit glib.

Incumbents are mad because they are following the rules and some of these new firms are clearly not. But the incumbents aren't the biggest problem, which the article more or less hints as the culprit. No, the problem for 'innovation' is convincing people why they should let the other half of their duplex run a youth hostel without a license. And no, saying your K-nearest neighbor algorithm's got it covered is not going to be enough.

Some might compare this to copyright. And this is where they'd be right. It's not very obvious who copyright protects. No one has ever had a GB of songs cause them to wonder whether their neighborhood is safe anymore. You might even make the same case for fin services. Why regulate those? Well, I'd grant you there too. How many people died from the fin crisis again? Perhaps we are pushing it. Either way, in the land of the physical universe, the universe where Uber and Airbnb are so clearly inhabiting, the reasoning behind the laws is remarkably obvious.

[temphn]

> And no, saying your K-nearest neighbor algorithm's got it covered is not going to be enough.

This is sheer assertion. What do you think is better? Uber - where you can see your driver's name and photo, know that he has a five star rating with 47/50 positive recommendations, and know that a third party is tracking your GPS location at all times...or the city government's antiquated taxi medallion service? Ditto for Airbnb.

> designed to protect people

Let's be real here, city government regulations "protect people" in the same way the TSA "protects people". Which is to say they don't and pretend that they do. You're responsible for protecting yourself. The police can't protect you from wandering into a bad neighborhood or even stop you from getting mugged; they can only clean up the mess after the fact. And no cab driver license will replace exercising your judgment before you enter a cab. Moreover, to be "kidnapped by a cabby" is a rare event. It's like soiling our pants over the threat from terrorists, which we've done quite a lot of over the last decade. Enough already.

[_delirium]

I trust the city government to keep the neighboring landlord from turning his apartment buiding into a ghetto hotel without the proper noise-mitigation measures, more than I trust AirBnB to do it.

In many areas AirBnB isn't a problem, mainly when it's being used as a way for regular people to rent out spare rooms or their apartment. But in NYC and London, people are starting to run larger-scale traditional hotel operations, only without following any of the regulations for traditional hotels. There, AirBnB's failure to implement any kind of replacement for municipal regulation is most noticeable, especially in its impact on other people's property.

[temphn]

> I trust the city government to keep the neighboring landlord from turning his apartment buiding into a ghetto hotel without the proper noise-mitigation measures, more than I trust AirBnB to do it.

You do? Section 8 ring a bell? Many more landlords and governments agencies have turned apartments into ghetto hotels than individual Airbnb hosts. And the result has been a spike in the murder rate:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american...

So USG is using tax dollars to move in murderers next door, and landlords are taking those dollars. Yet one trusts USG to "protect" you from a ghetto hotel?

[larsonf]

100% to all of these things.

But do you see how the conversation we are having is now about simply the regulations and whether they are really protecting people and not about how there are some incumbents trying to protect their turf?

The two concepts are mixed, often, and should not be.

[temphn]

Cool man. Thanks for being civil as I was probably too heated in my response. I'd say that many regulations, like many political policies, sound good in the abstract. But the devil is in the details. It's the execution, not the idea! :) And I think the execution is where city government is lacking, perhaps in part due to poor incentives (i.e. not getting paid in proportion to the extent that the ideal is actually achieved).

[larsonf]

I think it comes down to who we think the battle is against.

One narrative says that it's murky industrial cooperatives lobbying to stay incumbent that keeps these new startups down. And the resulting laws are/were formed from not-so-good-intentions and are needlessly complicated or antiquated because of that.

But it's worse than that. Some laws are purposely complicated because of special interest pressure, sure, but the big ones--the Goliath ones--are well-intentioned laws passed by regulators concerned mainly how to protect the people. And not only are these on the books, but they've become embedded in common sense. I mean, look at my earlier response, I said it was "obvious" that these laws do in fact protect. The battle is convincing the public that, no, this stuff is antiquated, and that we really do have methods that make this and that regulation obsolete.

But focusing the attention on bad-intentioned industrial groups is the wrong approach and will never win against the regulatory momentum of the democratic state.