Salviati: "It is morally wrong to pass a law saying my neighbor cannot rent his home to negroes, and those advocating for such laws are bad people."
Simplicio (historical): "In the US the answer is clearly 'yes you can regulate his private business'. In many US cities renting out a home to a negro is a violation of the local zoning code."
Do you see the fallacy of this argument? I'm arguing "should", not "is".
I do. If you go read the historical justification for zoning law in the US (by the way zoning and land use laws were originally intended to keep negroes out rich neighborhoods) they rest on the idea that as long as the government can come up with a "rational basis" that the law would "improve the public welfare" than zoning laws are a legitimate exercise in state police power. This was around the 1920's.
Later you have a concern for civil rights but the courts pretty much ignored the issue of how zoning might impact poor minorities.
There's been some lefty rumbling about maybe modifying the zoning code so that poor minorities can still afford to live in rich areas. Of course the remedies proposed are better zoning laws, not no zoning laws.
My concern is that these land use laws take away yield from capital (ie rent from landowners). The US economy has not been growing very fast lately - I don't think the US can any longer afford the costs of an extensive regulatory state. Locking away the returns to land in exchange for centrally planning all the land uses might make things feel "nice" in the short run but in the long run could impoverish the country.
I think if they do regulate it, they should have a good reason for it.
All the reasons cited in this thread seem pretty bad. I say they are bad because when you apply the same reasons to regulating anything other than AirBnB, suddenly they don't seem like good reasons at all.
In order to justify the New Deal the Court lowered its standard for state infringement of liberty to: "You just need any reason for this law, it doesn't have to be a good one"
Simplicio (historical): "In the US the answer is clearly 'yes you can regulate his private business'. In many US cities renting out a home to a negro is a violation of the local zoning code."
Do you see the fallacy of this argument? I'm arguing "should", not "is".