Think of it from the perspective of someone who owns a condo there: they didn't sign up to live in a hotel and deal with transient neighbours. There's a reason zoning laws exist.
Yes. Airbnb, “hosts”, and “guests” are all bad actors stealing from the commons.
If I wanted to live in a hotel, I’d move to a hotel. Instead in I rented in a residential building. If someone rents the apartment next door under false pretenses and turns it into a hotel room, violating his lease agreement and the law, he belongs in prison.
> Yes. Airbnb, “hosts”, and “guests” are all bad actors stealing from the commons.
While there might be some bad actors, the ability to sell/utilize unused space is very valuable. When I moved to Seattle a few years ago after college, I wanted to explore different neighborhoods to find out where I wanted to live. I found an Airbnb that let me rent out a persons mother-in-law house for $1000 for a month which is like 1/3rd of hotel rates and way more spacious because the alternative is that they would just let that space sit empty making it useless.
It’s the right thing because airbnb distorts house prices (among other factors too). In some cases pricing locals out of the market in place of tourists. Which is why those rules are often in place.
Incidentally, you can give up on God without giving up on justice. This is in fact the basis of the law in countries without state-sanctioned religions: coming up with shared axioms of just behavior and reasoning from there. So yes, there are means by which one can define just and unjust prices. If someone is hanging from a precipice by a thread he may agree that the price of his life is all his wealth and the value of his future labor. This does not mean that this is a just price for saving him. Maybe it is, but that depends on your axioms of justice.
