The backlash against overtourism • Hacker News Board

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#301

Post by bobthepanda » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

lxmorj wrote: post #278

bobthepanda wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government responds to the will of residents, not short-term visitors. A ban is just the residents' preference to set the number of permits or business licenses for AirBnBs to zero. A government has no obligation to accommodate AirBnB. Saying moving is an option trivializes how difficult moving can be, and is about as helpful as saying, "If you don't like the current president, why don't you just move to another…

I find banning AirBnB a lazy form of governance, much like open container laws. "This behavior is correlated with undesirable outcomes, so it is illegal irrespective of the actual result of the behavior". The other argument I see is that it prices out locals. Sure, allowing someone to own a 6-unit building and rent it out as a de-facto hotel will increase housing prices. But allowing locals to rent out their apartmen…

Living next to tourists is unpleasant and unwanted, and is so because tourists don't really care about anything other than their short-term visit. AirBnB is not correlated with that, AirBnB is a direct facilitator of it.

Allowing people to rent out their apartment doesn't make property more affordable, it allows people to bid up rents with AirBnB income and it prices out people on the margins unable or unwilling to rent out their own home.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#302

Post by newnewpdro » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:32 PM UTC

isostatic wrote: post #282

newnewpdro wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa...

1 death? Why aren’t they stopping driving which causes nearer one death an hour than one death per 50 years

I think you need to step back and look at the bigger picture of how this disaster has impacted Japan.

Reducing this crisis, which is ongoing, to "1 death" demonstrates a profound lack of empathy and understanding of what this nation has had to deal with because of these reactors.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#303

Post by kazinator » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 7:34 PM UTC

newnewpdro wrote: post #302

isostatic wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 death? Why aren’t they stopping driving which causes nearer one death an hour than one death per 50 years

I think you need to step back and look at the bigger picture of how this disaster has impacted Japan. Reducing this crisis, which is ongoing , to "1 death" demonstrates a profound lack of empathy and understanding of what this nation has had to deal with because of these reactors.

Also, the Wikipedia article that is cited as the source for "1 death" contains the following quote:

A survey by the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun computed that of some 300,000 people who evacuated the area, approximately 1,600 deaths related to the evacuation conditions, such as living in temporary housing and hospital closures, had occurred as of August 2013, a number comparable to the 1,599 deaths directly caused by the earthquake and tsunami in the Fukushima Prefecture in 2011.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#304

Post by bobthepanda » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 8:44 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #120

Couldn't this be a failure from the European cities in question? While European countries are on the top of the list, the cities? Not that much. The first one is Bangkok. With around 22 million tourists. Paris is third with 18 million. Interestingly, Paris has more things to see, a more extensive metro system (actually waaa..y more extensive). Yet, I seem to be more bothered by tourists in Paris than in Bangkok. In B…

Paris's main touristic attractions short of Disneyland Paris is its historical districts. By definition you can't just recreate that somewhere else. It's like saying a small ski town in the Alps is too underbuilt for tourism; that's kind of the entire point.

Hong Kong is hardly good for tourism, given how many small businesses have been replaced by luxury stores hawking brand-name products to Mainlanders.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#305

Post by lordnacho » Wed, Oct 31, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

Mankrik wrote: post #290

lordnacho wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. They also live in the nicest homes, live longer, have nicer cars, and so forth. Not saying it's fantastic, but if you have to ration a resource willingness to pay is a place to start. I don't feel the same way about every resource (eg health and education) but whether you can visit some old town somewhere doesn't seem essential.

And then you've changed the meaning of these pieces of cultural heritage to mean they are some kind of exclusive culture that can only be accessed by the wealthy bourgeois of the world. There would be no limit to this, they can artificially make the price as high as they want. It should be on a ticketing basis that is limited daily, not by pricing out wealth brackets in the world. You can only imagine that of the hun…

Well there's paintings that are part of our cultural heritage that most of us will never see, other than in reproductions. Doesn't mean you can't appreciate it. I don't really mind if the original is owned by some billionaire. The cultural significance is still something that's open to everyone to appreciate. But we get to do that knowing some guy who really cares about it is spending crazy money on maintaining it.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#306

Post by isostatic » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 8:26 AM UTC

kazinator wrote: post #303

newnewpdro wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you need to step back and look at the bigger picture of how this disaster has impacted Japan. Reducing this crisis, which is ongoing , to "1 death" demonstrates a profound lack of empathy and understanding of what this nation has had to deal with because of these reactors.

Also, the Wikipedia article that is cited as the source for "1 death" contains the following quote: A survey by the newspaper Mainichi Shimbun computed that of some 300,000 people who evacuated the area, approximately 1,600 deaths related to the evacuation conditions, such as living in temporary housing and hospital closures, had occurred as of August 2013, a number comparable to the 1,599 deaths directly caused by t…

So tsunamis are bad. I get that.

Nuclear power did not cause the earthquake or tsunami.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#307

Post by anotherhuman0 » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 10:30 AM UTC

ajcodez wrote: post #196

cr1895 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All Italy has to do is start load balancing tourists. This is the approach the city of Amsterdam is trying in order to alleviate the huge tourism pressure. I'm not sure how effective it has been. It has resulted in funny things like "Amsterdam Castle" or "Amsterdam Beach" in tourist promotions that have nothing to do with Amsterdam. But, if it spreads the load...

If you already have tickets booked to Amsterdam I would recommend spending some time in Utrecht too. All of the canals and dutch charm, none of the red light district pub crawls.

Oh no, don't draw attention to it! (said as a former 10 year Utrecht resident)

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#308

Post by daxat_staglatz » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 12:08 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #234

pmiller2 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you just need to get AirBnB or AirBnB hosts to start paying their share of hotel tax, like they do in some other locales.

That solves one market problem (AirBnB has no level playing field with existing hotels.) That does not solve the other large problem; most residents do not want to live in a hotel district with other tourists, and especially not as hallway or floor mates. And residents do not want new hotel builds or conversions competing with apartments. With traditional hotels this is solved with permits and zoning, but AirBnB is u…

This is solved by the hotel tax as well: if you want to decrease the number of tourists, raise the tourist/hotel tax.

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#309

Post by Fuxy » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

kranner wrote: post #260

Fuxy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right it doesn't but everyone seems to assume it will which is quite baffling.

You seem to be looking at the economic payoff alone, whereas others are talking about the intrinsic payoff, i.e., that it is worthwhile to help refugees even if it's a net economic loss.

No I'm looking at the big picture and given the amount of refugees allowed in it is a major loss economically and culturally in the short term and quite likely in the long term as well.

The US did immigration right before only allowing in people when there was a need for workers and only allow predominantly cultures that would attempt to integrate and get along with the existing population.

The current policy allows unregulated areas (no go zones) to exist where the refugees make the laws; police are afraid to go in and they are not required to integrate into society plus their cultural and religious beliefs create a propensity for hostility against the locals/infidels.

Honestly it's a powder keg waiting to explode and given the rise of terrorist attacks in Europe it's getting there at a short and steady pace. It will take generations before their views will be moderate enough for them to be able to get along with the local population and the higher the amount of people and the longer they are kept in their echo chamber the longer it will take.

In the mean time we will see a rise in draconian Sharia law type laws since they will represent a considerable amount of the voting population just like in the UK. See Lauren Southern held under terrorism act for social experiment [1]

Mind you the UK allowed the change to be gradual and their local Muslim population is quite moderate over all yet this is still happening.

[1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJt7oZSONiU)

Anybody see the irony of a weak white canadian girl held under a terrorism act for distributing a bunch of fliers with some text on it?

Re: The backlash against overtourism

#310

Post by CryptoPunk » Thu, Nov 01, 2018, 6:14 PM UTC

hh3k0 wrote: post #277

CryptoPunk wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that about any economic activity. A greenhousing effect would also not be harmful to all or even most tourist sites. Your criticism just seems like a blanket criticism of human existence.

> You could say that about any economic activity. Any unnecessary and polluting economic activity that is actively killing the planet, yes. > A greenhousing effect would also not be harmful to all or even most tourist sites. I doubt that. If it won't be directly harmful in the next 100 years, there will be as many as 143 million people that'll be displaced due to climate change by 2050. Even if the tourist sites in q…

>>Any unnecessary and polluting economic activity that is actively killing the planet, yes.

All economic activity pollutes, and therefore according to your logic, is "actively killing the planet".

And if you want to be Spartan about it, a significant portion of economic activity is unnecessary, so your criticism is equally applicable to a major share of everything humans do.

In reality people need more than the basic necessities, and will pursue more than them. You're not offering a reasonable way forward with your over-critical analysis that singles out tourism as a harmful activity because of a particular set of properties that it has, that are shared by numerous other activities.