[head_stomp]

Why is this person renting or buying an apartment in a building whose management allows their residents to rent their apartments out like hotel rooms? Why can't this function through contracts with disputes being adjudicated through a court system rather than through comparatively blunt statutory regulation? For example, replace "run a hotel with strangers coming and going at all hours" with 'smoke cigarettes' or 'own a pet.'

[gaius]

The answer is, management usually doesn't allow this, and they flaunt the rules anyway. Which is why the guy in the story I posted below is getting evicted. And how many AirBnB types pay taxes on the income either?

[head_stomp]

My response is, statutory regulation usually doesn't allow this, and they flaunt the rules anyway. I don't see how statutory regulation solves the problem you're arguing it's supposed to. Is your concern that courts do not punish contract violators as harshly as those who violate statutory regulation? Or maybe that allowing different management policies places too great a burden on consumers? Alternatively, I can see why hotels would favor blunt statutory regulation and that anti-competition aspect of it is of concern to me.

How many stay-at-home parents pay taxes on their income? Or would you be ok with AirBnB if payment mostly occurred through barter or a "gift economy?"

[gaius]

I'd be OK with it if the people who wanted to do it got the rules of their building association changed! Usually the residents would vote. Strange how that never seems to happen. The hotel regulation gives people who play by the rules they freely accepted when they move in a tool to use against those who flout them.

[head_stomp]

Absolutely, it would be awesome if people utilized voluntary collective action rather than coercion or fraud to assert their preferences. But why create a new, coercive tool that carries additional negative consequences instead addressing the inability/inefficiency to deal with the problem through contracts and the courts? What do you think causes the inability/inefficiency? I can't help but get the impression that people think that issues can't be addressed without statutory regulation such that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.