Senator Elizabeth Warren joins call for Airbnb probe
Of course the immediate Zeitgeist of the comments here is that this is about protection of entrenched interests and quashing of innovation.<p>Sure, there may be some of that.<p>However, we in the tech community need to recognize that doing something at scale creates a fundamental difference of kind, not merely of quantity.  Of course, to a large degree, that is the point of much modern tech, to take something that was simply local word-of-mouth stuff (&quot;oh, my friend&#x27;s got an apartment empty next month, perhaps you two can work out house-sitting for your visit&quot; or &quot;oh, she needs a ride to town too&quot;) and turning it into an instant service, globally scaled. This is what creates $billions of value with minimal infrastructure.<p>However, it is nonsense to say that there are no negative externalities, or that they are all trivial and ignore-able, or merely old incumbents protecting their ill-gotten economic territory.<p>Consider another potential technology that could be easily scaled -- speeding tickets.   Instead of relying on the local cop to manually measure your speed, chase you down, write a ticket and testify in court, they could simply get the data off your smartphone and ticket you ever time you sent over-speed.  They could just argue that &quot;this is just the same law as we&#x27;ve always had&quot;.  But the result would be that instead of maybe one ticket every X+ years, most of us would get multiple tickets every time we drove outside of a traffic jam.  It would fundamentally change everything about driving and the related economy.<p>Similarly, it&#x27;s one thing when a few people casually rent out a room for a few days a year, or get a house-sitter when they go on vacation.  But, it is altogether different when the information exchange infrastructure becomes sufficiently reliable and networked that it makes sense for people to run lodging as a business, even buying houses just for that purpose.<p>This substantially distorts the real estate market, and dumps a lot of externalities on neighbors.  It is one thing to buy a house or condo on the assumption that the neighbors are all residents with investment in the neighborhood&#x2F;building -- quite another to expect that all of the people around you are completely transient.  And, of course, even worse when the situation changes after you&#x27;ve moved in.<p>So, please think a bit before jumping on the &quot;they&#x27;re all ignorant Luddites&quot; bandwagon...<p>(edit - grammar&#x2F;clarity)