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Scale Ruins Everything

(coldwaters.substack.com)
175 points drc500free | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.215s | source
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endo_bunker ◴[] No.41841389[source]
Comical to suggest that AirBnB "ruined communities" or "destroyed the dream of home ownership" as if decades of federal, state, and local government policy had not already guaranteed those outcomes.
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sgdfhijfgsdfgds ◴[] No.41841453[source]
Airbnb has in fact ruined communities and destroyed the dream of home ownership for an entire class of people: those who would already be buying at the limits of their budgets to stay where they were brought up.

This happened even in areas where holiday home ownership and rental was common as a business.

The failure of government to grapple with the negative effects of Airbnb is a separate thing. Airbnb are, in fact, in control of their own morality.

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etothepii ◴[] No.41841783[source]
As a home owner that was only able to afford to buy a house because we were able to rent out the spare rooms on AirBnb I find fault in your logic.

I think you'll find that zoning/planning permission is the real bad guy here. That and a failure to understand Adam Smith and implement the ideas of Henry George.

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ToucanLoucan ◴[] No.41842133[source]
> As a home owner that was only able to afford to buy a house because we were able to rent out the spare rooms on AirBnb I find fault in your logic.

Then you're a landlord who has purchased more of a scarce resource than they require (a house larger than you need) who has then turned around and rented access to the extra you have to people who can't afford a home of their own, and in so doing have driven the cost of homeowner-ship just slightly higher, which was the reason you couldn't afford it in the first place. Repeat that a few thousand times and that's a huge contributing factor to why housing is in such a dire state here.

You haven't solved anything. You just went from being an exploited person to being an exploiter instead, taking advantage of people you should have solidarity with and inflicting the harm the system was inflicting on you, onto them instead. The system will continue feasting on people who can't manage the same as you did, and you now posses wealth you did not earn.

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1. dnissley ◴[] No.41850654[source]
People have desires that go beyond their needs, and so long as they have money they will spend it to satisfy them.

If we, as a society, took this into account we would make it easier to build more housing.

The fact that we don't is the moral, ethical, and economic tragedy of our age.