&gt; Which is the point: the &quot;sharing economy&quot; encourages service provision by amateurs without regulation, oversight, formal accountability, or adequate backup.<p>Yes.<p>&gt; It looks like a win because it&#x27;s cheaper, but that&#x27;s only true until something goes badly wrong.<p>It isn&#x27;t a win in my opinion, for many reasons. It violates all kinds of social contracts.<p>&gt; Oversight and regulation aren&#x27;t always a bad thing.<p>Agreed.<p>&gt; Sometimes they prevent avoidable accidents.<p>That&#x27;s a tricky one. I suspect this particular tree-swing would have killed <i>someone</i>, it&#x27;s a coincidence that it had to be an AirBNB guest so even if this particular person may not have died the accident itself would have probably happened anyway sooner or later. Which is sort of the root of my whole argument about this being a tragedy rather than an issue of liability.