
Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of Disruption - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/25/fawlty-logic/
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jim_h
FUD. I'll summarize for you below. I call it FUD since the author never
provides any sources or anything to actually back up what he writes.

"don’t want to be burned alive by faulty wiring"

"lack of fire exits or basic electrical safety"

"hell of noise and violence and shady goings"

"don’t want to be robbed, or scammed or murdered"

"credit card and not have that card cloned"

"drug-addled European backpackers armed with camping stoves"

"used by gangsters and slum lords to drive families from their apartments"

"fleece tourists into spending their vacations under unsafe roofs"

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hipsterelitist
You're skipping the one very good and valid point he makes in the article,
which is that the bill actually has an exemption which pretty much permits
services like AirBnB to exist, if not thrive. Basically, short term rentals
are acceptable as long as the owner is present... this means less competition
for your average AirBnB user.

Given this exemption, it makes me question why exactly AirBnB was so up in
arms about this, especially with their rhetoric being centered on protecting
the little guy. That being said, I love the service, though if I had more cash
I'd take a hotel every time.

~~~
jim_h
Also this: "absent owners can lend their rooms, but are banned from taking
money".

This means people that go on vacation cannot take in renters.

(Sorry, your point was a bit lost in all the FUD that was in that article.)

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bluesmoon
but apartment swaps are allowed

~~~
jim_h
I think the chances of people doing an apartment 'swap' for their out of
town/country vacation is pretty slim.

2 people going in the exact opposite direction and wanting to living in the
other person's home. Seems slim chance to me unless those people knew each
other in advance.

add - bluesmoon, learn something everyday. Though I think not all everybody
wants to open their own apt for swap and instead would rather rent someone's
for a week or 2.

~~~
bluesmoon
It actually happens fairly often on couchsurfing. Couple A from New York wants
to spend July in San Francisco and swaps with Couple B from San Francisco who
wants to spend July in New York. I've seen it happen with entire families too.

Less likely to work internationally, but domestically, it happens. It's the
key exchange that's the hard part, but the safest is to leave the key with a
neighbour and then call them from the other side to give them the okay.

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pg
You know you've made it when you become material for linkbait.

~~~
barmstrong
Yep - I think Paul Carr's schtick since he started there has just been to take
the most outrageous position possible to try and shock, awe, and offend his
way to page views. It's probably working to some extent, but at the end of the
day there isn't any substance to it - it's just a cheap trick.

~~~
projectileboy
I think he means AirBnB...

~~~
boredguy8
Why is parent being downvoted? PG says "material for linkbait" not "the author
of linkbait": it's a mildly obtuse compliment for AirBnB. The grandparent
misreads this, and someone helps him understand better, and gets slammed for
it? C'mon, people.

~~~
drats
Barmstrong was making a legitimate comment about troll tech journalists, in a
legitimate place (i.e. following its mention), which Projectileboy seems to
have grossly misinterpreted.

Both PG's comment and Barmstrong's make sense and flow to me; the "yep"
signifying agreement with the AirBnB complement before extending commentary on
the linkbait aspect: an addendum if you will. I don't see why, or how,
Barmstrong's reply to PG would be read in the manner Projectileboy objects to
- perhaps the dash could lead to such a reading but it's fairly difficult to
arrive at.

~~~
projectileboy
Holy cow, guys... I just thought (perhaps mistakenly) that the commenter had
missed the connection to AirBnB. Not a big deal.

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justin_vanw
let me paraphrase the article: "GET OFF MY LAWN YOU PUNK KIDS"

full disclosure: the startup I work at uses AirBNB when we bring in potential
new hires, unless they insist on a hotel. We have never had anything but the
absolute best experience, and I haven't spoken to anyone who has used it that
didn't become an evangelist for it. But I guess paranoia and hypothetical
boogy men trumps empirical data over at tech-crunch.

~~~
sandofsky
I wonder how you phrase the offer.

If I were planning to interview with a company and they suggested I use the
service, I would get the impression the company is cheap beyond practicality,
and find a way to politely back out of the interview.

~~~
smokinn
I would think the same.

There's obviously a market for people who don't mind sleeping with strangers
but I'm definitely not in it. I'm way too paranoid that I would get robbed.

The credit card cloning example from the original article would probably be my
biggest fear. I'd be checking my credit card purchases multiple times a day
for weeks I'm sure. While actually there I'm sure I would put my wallet, phone
and anything else that's valuable in a bag and sleep on top of it. It wouldn't
be a very relaxing night's sleep just before an interview.

On the other hand, hostels tend to be cheaper than AirBnB and I have no
problems sleeping there.

~~~
naz
You're scared of getting robbed by a middle-class condo owner, but you'll
happily share a hostel room with 6 traveling youths?

~~~
smokinn
Most hostels have dorm and private room options. I just get the private room.
It's more expensive than the dorm but way less expensive than a hotel. I've
never slept in a hostel that only offered dorm rooms.

I'm just as paranoid about the dorm option.

~~~
byw
Just curious, is this true mostly in a certain region or all over the world?
Also, what kind of price different should I be expecting between the dorm and
the private room?

~~~
smokinn
I'm not sure, I've mostly only stayed in hostels in Canada. The last one I
stayed at in Ottawa had rooms for 25$/night in the dorm or 60$/night for a
private single bed room.

<http://www.ottawahostel.com/>

~~~
ido
In most of Europe it seems ~20 euros/night for a dorm bed is about the
standard.

I'm used hostels (& couch surfing) quite a lot and never really had problems,
but I guess it depends on the region you are traveling in.

Tallanvor's approach seems unnecessarily paranoid to me, but I don't know
where he travels too.

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makmanalp
I'm sorry, but his claims seem to apply to a lot of hostels but not to any of
the airbnb homes I've been to. Public health concerns, egregious conditions,
credit card fraud ... If things like this happened in an airbnb home, they'd
get a bad rating and a bad comment explaining what went on, effectively
ruining the rest of their business. Also, payments happen through airbnb so
that also gets rid of a lot of problems and ripoff issues. There is a world of
difference between the hostels / illegal hotels mentioned and airbnb.

~~~
jerguismi
For hostels, there are sites like hostelbookers.com and hostelworld.com, and
reviews matter a lot with those sites. If you choose only top reviewed places,
you will get good service for sure.

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brianmckenzie
You're just as likely to have unsafe wiring in your leased apartment as w/an
AirBnB situation. Same goes for most of the stuff he said.

The article doesn't make any sense to me.

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w1ntermute
_Disclosure: I like hotels a lot – and I’ve spent much of my life in them.
Both of my parents are career-long hoteliers, first managing large corporate
chain units and now owning their own hotel in the UK._

Why would you even bother taking the opinion of such a biased source
seriously?

~~~
yurisagalov
Well, for one, because it's an _opinion_... He's overly dramatic in his post
and he doesn't present a lot of facts, but I think he's entitled to his
opinion, especially as long as he's honest about his bias...

~~~
billswift
"Opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one"; and this one really stinks.
EDIT- "this one" refers to the original article, not the parent comment; sorry
for any confusion.

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jdminhbg
Even by the standards of Techcrunch, this is a particularly egregious exercise
in begging the question.

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inboulder
"Sorry AirBnB Hipsters, I’ll Take Health and Safety Over the Cult of
Disruption"

And you were free to do that already, why force everyone else? (what is that
again hotel lobby?)

------
richcollins
_Because I don’t want to be burned alive by faulty wiring. Because I don’t
want to be robbed, or scammed or murdered. Because I want to pay by credit
card and not have that card cloned. Because I want legal recourse if something
goes wrong._

That government licensing will protect you from these better than the market
is an untested assumption.

~~~
nl
_That government licensing will protect you from these better than the market
is an untested assumption._

Actually, that isn't true.

Many building code laws (and by extension hotel laws requiring fire escape
access etc) were enacted because of large scale urban fires (eg
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fire_safety_legislat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_fire_safety_legislation_in_the_United_Kingdom#England),
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Baltimore_Fire#Legacy>).

In general, building codes and related safety regulations for hotels have
strong scientific and engineering testing behind them.

It's true that these regulations are often imperfect. But it is also true that
they have been tested and proven to be better than the absence of them.

~~~
kiba
Sometime, the government just take the regulation code from private sources,
such as Underwriter Labs. In fact, UL sets the standard from building code,
household checmical, and fire-fighting equipments, and more.

However, safety, like anything else is a _tradeoff_. There is no such thing as
a perfectly safe building. Even if you were to make it totally safe, it would
be too expensive to use or construct.

You want safety? Just how much are you willing to pay?

~~~
nl
Exactly - I couldn't have said it better myself.

Given that safety costs, it is usually appropriate that government regulates
the minimum acceptable standard.

Beyond that, the market decides (see some active safety features in cars etc)

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shadowsun7
<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/airbnb-brian-chesky/>

Airbnb's founder is _himself_ living on Airbnb for the next coupla months (or
even indefinitely - though he doesn't say). If that isn't a plus for
dependability, I don't know what is.

Edit: here's the first blog post - <http://blog.airbnb.com/living-on-airbnb-0>

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seldo
I wasn't aware that the law has an exemption for short-term lets if the owner
is present -- which is almost all AirBnB lets that I've seen, isn't it?

~~~
jonknee
> which is almost all AirBnB lets that I've seen, isn't it?

That's more Couchsurfing's territory. There are plenty of shares on AirBnB,
but whole apartments and even buildings are commonly listed too.

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hdctambien
I agree with the author, but he definitely could have gone about his argument
a bit more civilly.

As an example of the type of people that would/will abuse AirBnB and similar
services I submit this article describing my last landlord:
<http://www.tenant.net/Other_Areas/Massachusetts/jaffe.html> . It is dated
1994, but they are still up to the same tricks 16 years later (I lived in one
of their houses for the last year). I can't imagine the field day they would
have if they knew about AirBnB and the like.

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bluesmoon
FWIW, the bill still allows couchsurfing where exchange of money is strictly
prohibited by the terms of service.

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JulianMorrison
You go right ahead and do that - great thing about a free market, it makes
room for everyone.

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defen
Wow...talk about a flamebait article. This one was so bad that I finally went
ahead and actually added an entry in /etc/hosts for techcrunch.com pointing to
127.0.0.1, something I had been "threatening" to do for a while.

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angrycoder
first response, why is the main character from "Up in the Air" writing blog
posts.

second response, Techcrunch has become the Fox News of technology blogs.

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greenlblue
Is this guy for real? I understand the need for minimum safety standards but
the ban against AirBnB and their ilk goes a bit far.

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noodle
i find it hard to take this angry rant seriously.

if it were much more calm, with rational arguments and justifications, i might
actually agree, or at least agree to disagree.

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groaner
What the heck is NSFW about this?

~~~
megablast
The techcrunch section is called NSFW, it is a weekly writeup about something
or other.

