And the truth comes out,
Rayiner is one of those smug elites who believes he can make decisions for you better than you can make for yourself. His views lead to fascist dictatorships.
Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
301–310 of 403 posts
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll put a sharper point on it: People must be governed.[1] People have an enormous capacity to be violent, racist, sexist, small minded, paranoid, greedy, and dishonest, and the whole point of government is to collectively overcome these failings. Obviously government cannot stop discrimination just as it cannot stop murder, theft, etc. But it can dramatically reduce it by imposing the proper social norms. [1] https…
No, the point of government is to protect your rights from violation by others. Those unalienable rights you are born with as outlined in the bill of rights. It's not to overcome the failings of humanity (an impossible task if ever there was one).
Your inalienable rights are a construct, enforced solely by "governments". Your rates in the state of nature are nothing like the rights your countrymen have agreed to provide you.
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, I specified culture, not race. The way of life is the problem, not someone's skin color or biological features. For example, you wouldn't want gypsies in your residence or hotel, they WILL cause problems and it will negatively effect your other hotel guests. For similar reasons you wouldn't want to live next to them either. Another culture is that of the rich (especially newly rich), where their wealth has allowe…
Except that the quote "Certain cultures are known for having lots of kids and not raising them to be quiet or disciplined" is literally a racists trope, used historically by racists to disparage other racial/ethnic groups. And they always defend their this baseless assertion by saying its a critique of culture and not about race. But, that's plainly bullshit. Its especially bullshit because you aren't referring to an…
No, credit cards don't do anything. It's merely one part of a screening process. If you try to charge a credit card for room damage or anything, you will get a chargeback that you will lose because Visa or the issuing bank will simply state that according to the merchant agreement, the card networks are NOT responsible for damage and other charges not specified on the rental agreement.
Hell, if you don't have a chip and signature transaction (good luck getting a signature) and you're trying to charge them for amounts not specified prior to check in (a blanket statement of you're liable for so and so doesn't count). You CAN take them to court, but it's not worth it paying lawyers and the time and they usually don't have money.
By gypsies, I mean the groups of people that roam around trying to steal and take advantage of every facility they can, which is how I've heard the term. They don't work, they live off welfare, it's a specific type of person.
Why don't the vast majority of decent hotels (and some local governments) allow hourly rooms? Is it to prevent prostitutes? No, because if you can afford to pay for a night, you're welcome to stay with whoever you want. But if you start selling hourly rooms, chances are you're going to end up with an unsavory crowd which will drive away your other clientele and you're almost guaranteed to have a bad time. Again, this is also another screening method.
Everyone screens and discriminates people all the time, and I'm not dog whistling anyone except those that cause unreasonable damage. When dealing with lodging, if your aim is to sell a dwelling night after night, then anything that impedes that can be considered damage. If your hotel offers a room with a kitchen, and you're selling to Indians or other groups that traditionally use a lot of spices in their cooking, you should put that room out of order for days after they leave because it will need to be carpet shampooed, it might need to be painted, and you will likely lose revenue when you rent this room to that type of person. Is it wrong for a business owner to take this into account when deciding whether or not to accept them?
As I said before, this is not selling a widget to them and then forgetting about them. In hotels and lodging, the transaction is not complete once the guest has left, it really depends on the state of the room once they have left, and in order to be a viable business, in my experience you have be at least be aware of the odds and plan accordingly.
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#304I don't know if this is really a tractable problem. At the end of the day, either airbnb lets hosts decide who stays or doesn't. If they don't let hosts decide, they'll likely lose a ton of hosts, since having someone stay in your home is a very personal thing and a huge risk. If they do, then they're going to have significant discrimination problems as long as people are discriminatory, i.e., basically forever.
That reminds me that I dislike employment anti-discrimination laws too. I suggest a compromise to apply them only to things like manual labor where employees are commodities for example.
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
"If you have personal preferences about whom you let live in your home that don't align with mine, you shouldn't be allowed to have anyone in your home at all!"
Yes, that is generally the principle involved with business transactions like these. We tried it the other way, and all the black people ended up cordoned into North Lawndale. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case... As a society, we decided to amend the social contract to remedy this. You can choose who to have in your house based on any criteria you like. You cannot choose who to rent to on t…
"The other way" described in the article looks like this: government insured private mortgages depending on racial build of the neighborhood, with the best insurance available only to white-only ones, and none available to ones when black people lived, so the government artificially lowered costs for white people buying in white neighborhoods and created a huge cost (and disincentive) to allow any non-white people to enter those neighborhoods, however rich and financially stable by themselves they might be.
How exactly this is an example that proves necessity of government regulating private rentals?
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#306It's time to stop and think about where the cyber-Libertarian line of argument is taking us.
On the one side, AirBnB's rampant violation of lodging and zoning regulations should be disregarded because it's the will of the people, and because hotels are just abusing their government-granted monopoly on mini soaps and pay-per-view porn.
Now people are arguing that, because AirBnB is only serving as a matchmaking service for millions of individual homeowners, not only is it hard to prevent discrimination, but they shouldn't even try.
Assuming the free market works as it usually does, we are heading for a future where we replace millions of hotel beds that are guaranteed to serve everyone equally with millions of AirBnB beds hosted by proprietors free to discriminate against anybody and everybody. How is that progress?
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
> prevent people from making choices that they don't agree with, which was basically the opposite of the point of the US. I'd stay away from these issues on HN unless we really have something valuable and new to add. I'll just say that there's another side to this and many strongly disagree with this notion. To sum it up and just put both sides out there (hopefully not starting a debate), people facing widespread dis…
It's my home and I do what I want. If you're black and I don't like you, I have every right not to let you into my house, no matter your history. You cannot debate this statement.
I can and I will. Morally (if not legally), that changes the minute you are offering up a bed in your home in exchange for money.
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's fine. Until you have a little business in that home and are now refusing paying customers.
Nope, still fine even then. You do realize that if I rent out a room in my home (say, for a year's lease), I can discriminate on any basis I so choose?
Legally, yes. Morally, I'd disagree.
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#309Will you force women who have been rape victims to accommodate convicted sex offenders? The list of such unappealing pairs isnt small nor knowable, and can really only be determined by the people directly negotiating the room.
Nobody is forcing anybody to do anything - except perhaps suggesting that if you're going to let random strangers stay in your house for money, then perhaps you should be required to abide by the same rules that other commercial providers of similar services have been deemed by society to be required to obey. A hotel who refused a room to someone named Mohammed or who had black or brown skin or who had the same name as a registered sex offender would be rightly penalised for doing so.
The argument that "it's my home and it's a special and private place" kinda went out the window once you decided to list that room on Airbnb. Nobody forced anyone to do that. (Ignoring for a moment arguments about the Bay Area tech industry and it's affects on rental prices...)
Re: Airbnb Adopts Rules in Effort to Fight Discrimination by Its Hosts
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's fine. Until you have a little business in that home and are now refusing paying customers.
Nope, still fine even then. You do realize that if I rent out a room in my home (say, for a year's lease), I can discriminate on any basis I so choose?
Not if you're in the U. S.