91–100 of 127 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Customers love Uber because it's prices are currently subsidized by VC money. Once that goes away, we'll see how competitive they are.
Uber is profitable in the USA. So I see no reason why its won't stay competitive.
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could you add in your analysis of airbnb or how it relates to what you've written - you've left it entirely out of your paragraph and I can't draw an immediate conclusion. (Though maybe you were adding information about hotel taxation without any thoughts about airbnb or how it relates.)
It is related to AirBnB because there is an argument that the tax is unfair to consumers to begin with. It is designed to screw over foreigners.
I read jdavis703's comment very carefully and I don't agree that this is the argument that poster was making!
They wrote
>so if you want to go there you just have to pay the taxes. If they ever get high enough that hotels can't book rooms, the businesses should lobby the government to lower them.
That doesn't have any indignation (unlike your comment). So it's certainly not precisely what was meant. I don't want to put words in jdavis703's mouth, I want to hear how they say this relates to airbnb or what the policy change should be.
I read their comment as being basically acceptant of high taxes (" If they ever get high enough that hotels can't book rooms, the businesses should lobby the government to lower them.") -- but it does't go on to say "For the same reasons, airbnb should also be taxed at a very high rate, and should also lobby to lower said very high rates only if they can't fill rooms anymore." (not a quote)
In fact it could say, "high hotel taxes are good for the locals, who are the ones who make these decisions." (not a quote) It could be read that they think airbnb should also have the same high rates. (But perhaps the correct reading is the opposite, that both hotels and airbnb should not have any high taxes.)
Anyway I'd like to hear it from them :) I like their analysis in descriptive terms and I'd like to hear from them how it applies to airbnb or what should be done to both hotels and airbnb, in their opinion.
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Visitors use a ton of resources--they should pay for them. E.g. think about all the money that goes into security for Times Square.
Most cities seem to love tourism, to the point that it's considered an industry and has its own advertising. Tourists pay sales tax and indirectly pay other taxes through businesses that cater to tourists.
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So are you saying we should get rid of any regulation where "customers love a service" that doesn't follow the regulation? So we should allow a contract killer for hire on-line marketplace because drug cartels would really love to book their preferred hit man from an iPhone app?
Slippery-slope fallacy. Revising regulation to strike a balance between no regulation and existing regulations to allow services like AirBnB and Uber does not have a causative link to creating a contract-for-hire market for killers...
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Actually no, owner-occupied residential buildings do not have to meet codes, under the liberal belief that it's OK for a person to subject themselves knowingly to certain hazards. However it is not OK for that owner to subject others to those hazards, which is why hotels and rental properties have to meet those codes even as the codes change. Therefore it is a regulatory advantage of AirBNB that unregulated residence…
> Actually no, owner-occupied residential buildings do not have to meet codes, You are just straight up incorrect. No two ways about it. I'm actually a little surprised someone could have this little exposure to the residential regulatory bureaucracy. Maybe that's why you can support it. Here are some (not all) of the residential building codes that apply here. https://www.tdhca.state.tx.us/single-family/training/doc…
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> 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…
Do you have citations for any of this? Where are you getting your 90% numbers? The parent post doesn't cite specific numbers about how many regulations were put into place as a direct result of a tragedy but they do directly cite some examples, which you do not. Nobody (literally, anti-regulation straw man arguments not withstanding) opposes pointless regulation and nobody would be opposed to periodic reviews of exis…
I would add in support of your argument that AirBnB should not have an economic advantage as a result of the different regulations. I do think commerce benefits from having fair and equal playing field / rules and suffers when companies can benefit from regulator arbitrage.
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Which hotel regulations do you think are overly onerous and ridiculous? Most of those regulations were put in place to protect communities and customers, not the hotels themselves. Zoning laws prevent tourists from overrunning resident communities where people don't want them. Safety and health regulations ensure that customers won't get injured or sick during their stay. Taxes help cities pay for all the improvement…
> Most of those regulations were put in place to protect communities and customers I don't have much of an issue with communities using zoning rules to prevent AirBnBing. That's a separate issue from top-down hotel regulations. The cost of "protecting" me from hotels is several orders of magnitude higher than the value I get from these "protections". Of course, most of the cost of hotel regulation is hotel taxes (whi…
Have you ever read the analysis Ford Motor Co. did when they were determining the cost of adding a safety feature to the Pinto (it would cost $11 to add a feature to prevent a low speed rear end collisions, as low as 25mile/hr from spraying gas into the passenger cabin and lighting everyone on fire, the total cost of the safety feature for all Pinto's: $140m, the cost of an expected number of 180 deaths, and 180 injury (and resulting law suit payments): $50m). In the absence of regulation or judicial liability (which is also a regulation, but one with more uncertain cost making it harder for businesses to plan for and comply with), companies would make this exact analysis all of the time.
I would assume you would be willing to pay $11 for the safety feature right? Thus, given the asymmetric information that benefits Ford, and prevents consumers from demanding that as a mandatory feature or an "upgrade" option, it seems like an acceptible regulation to impose.
See https://users.wfu.edu/palmitar/Law&Valuation/Papers/1999/Leg...)
See also https://philosophia.uncg.edu/phi361-metivier/module-2-why-do...
> "I think you are putting too much stock in the effectiveness of regulation..."
Except that clean water regulation very clearly prevents disease. Have you heard of the origin of clean water regulation in London? One researcher traced a cholera epidemic to a single well, city water services and related regulations were a direct result of his effort and advocacy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_ou...
Before that, in 1849, 8,000 people died in NYC from cholera from water: https://dec.alaska.gov/eh/dw/publications/historic.html)
Last time I checked people aren't dying in NYC from unclean water. I am also confident that the utility of 8000 people dying greatly exceeds the cost of providing clean water.
Hotels are heavily taxed because tourists and business travellers can't vote. In many cases cities like London and NYC are non-fungible goods, so if you want to go there you just have to pay the taxes. If they ever get high enough that hotels can't book rooms, the businesses should lobby the government to lower them.
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Just want to point out that the parent post cited specific evidence, with links to a fairly reputable source (wikipedia), to support their claims, which your counter-post lacks.
What is your point? I'm making an argument that can stand or fall on its own. Dropping links that don't add any semantic value is a cheap trick to buy the appearance of a strong argument, but doesn't change the meaning of anything in the post. The GGP post just added some links to stories about historical building fires, which we all already knew existed and added nothing of substance to his argument, but it still ma…
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Also, the much higher VAT rate paid by most hotels in the UK compared to most AirBnBs (17% vs 0.6%) is not because AirBnBs are illegally avoiding the tax, but simply because most hotels, but few AirBnBs, cross the business-size threshold where the higher VAT kicks in.
its not a "higher VAT" threshold, you do not have to register for or charge VAT at all if your business earns less than £85,000 (you might want to if you pay out a lot of VAT though). This is unusual in the EU, most countries do not have this exemption I don't think.