> Public safety regulations are not pointless red tape.
This is the typical refrain of people who are trying to pitch pointless red tape; "it's about public safety!"
Of course, 90% of regulations in any given industry have nothing to do with "safety" and everything to do with sustaining the bureaucracy that created them. Even those regulations that are nominally intended to increase safety are often counterproductive, and cause more utility loss than they prevent.
> Is your position that we would be better to just ignore fire and other safety rules for all hotels?
Are you really under the impression that the competitive advantage of AirBnB comes from ignoring fire code? That's insane for multiple reasons, but mostly that all residential buildings (including AirBnBs) have to obey fire code already.
> In light of a clear rationale for such regulations
You're making two false assumptions here; one is that most regulations even nominally have a "clear rationale", and the second is that regulations that appear to have clear rationales to some self-interested regulatory group actually do. Most people, including regulators, don't bother to look beyond first-order costs imposed by proposed regulations. It's quite likely that many safety-oriented regulations claim a great deal more lives than they save, since the increased economic burden of those regulations sucks up resources that would otherwise be used on e.g. healthcare or personal enjoyment. On an individual level, the difference is very smal, but multiplied over the millions of people who are affected by the regulation it adds up to a lot of man-hours and lives lost.
> That would be like a race between two cars, one that has a 40 mile/hour speed limit, the other no speed limit. Which car would you pick?
The unlimited car is clearly superior, so you're not exactly helping your own argument here.