I'm a little confused here. The article says Uber and Airbnb are quite effectively regulating themselves, and never bothers explaining why they're a problem.
I think he means they're good at regulating problems that affect them directly but they're bad at/don't care about regulating externalities. There are laws in place to protect people who stay in hotels and AirBNB does a good job of emulating those, but there are also laws to prevent hotels from messing up society as a whole (e.g. zoning laws) that AirBNB doesn't emulate well or at all.
Right, the regulations are meant to protect both the parties to the economic activity and people who aren't parties. The Uber equivalent, I guess, would be that their system can eliminate drivers passengers don't like, and passengers drivers don't like, but they have no incentive (except bad PR) to make sure, for example, that drivers not carrying customers are properly insured should they hit pedestrians. The self-regulatory mechanisms don't give the pedestrians or other non-parties a lever to advocate on their own behalf.
Why wouldn't those apply anyway? Anyone can rent out a room, condo, or a house, just by posting a classified ad, and landlord-tenant law applies. Nobody has to share information with the state under normal circumstances, but if there's a dispute, the courts apply the appropriate law. The same sort of framework could apply to Airbnb rentals.
I agree, it could work. The problem people have is that AirBnB is unregulated. Normally you do have to share rental income. There may also be local regulations prohibiting rental, sublets, short-term rentals, etc.
The absence of any data to keep Uber and Airbnb accountable is the problem. The current regulatory climate effectively black boxes the entire situation. Uber can cut corners in legal grey areas because the governments have no clue what actually is going on said areas. If they did, then regulators would be able to act (fine, issue injunctions to stop service, and etc), but obviously they can't because of what I've mentioned.
I agree up to a point. It's pretty clear that regulations in certain spheres like car and food safety have largely created a culture that doesn't universally cut corners. Then again, killing off a good portion of your customer base would do the same thing I guess as no one would want to buy your products if they have a good chance of dying from them.