I have a theory, which is that we do not in fact want the amount of safety and regulation we have. Dont get me wrong. Most regulation started out as a good idea. Some people got hurt or killed and something needed to be done. Events like the Cocoanut Grove fire, the Winecoff Hotel Fire. The problem is that no legislator gets paid for going to the State Capitol, or Washington and telling his constituents, you are safe enough. And often when something goes wrong, people say there oughta be a law and regulators are pressed to come up with new rules. There are thousands of reasons why these rules are popular. They allow individual propertyholders to defend the value of their property by legally mandating that I can only do with my property what they want to do with theirs, regardless of whether it creates an actual inconvenience for them or not. Thats zoning. They allow politicians to exercise power and broker deals on a local level with industries that might support them, by over-regulating a rival industry or agreeing to appoint a do nothing official to regulate them. Organized crime and unions were active in regulation, because it helped build a web they could employ to their benefit, particularly if they controlled local politicians and regulators. And regulation grew for a wealthy middle class that had the money to enjoy the fruits of absolute certainty. To know that its hotel had been inspected by ten agencies. I was in a WAWA recently and saw no less than fourteen different certificates displayed on the wall that were necessary to run a convenience store. On one hand, regulation protects us. On the other, it traps us. It keeps us from being able to be entrepreneurs. It ensures that companies that can afford staff to handle regulation are the only services we can buy from. I tend to favor the belief than a watershed change in how we do business is coming. There are a couple of reasons. One is that it is safer now. In the 1800s, there was an inn in Delaware where the patroness tended to murder guests for their belongings. In todays connected world theyd be missed within days, and the trail would lead back to her doorstep. And murder gets you one star out of five on reviews. In 1930, the only way to know if a hotel was safe was to stay there or trust in local regulation, because seeing how the last thousand guests felt about it was out of the question. Some things, like food, and fire safety, need regulation. But a lot of regulation can be crowd-sourced. Sure there are ways to get around it (reopen under a new name, etc.). But that only goes so far, and other regulation can be circumvented as well. Much regulation is actually the imposition of stiff fines on discovered violators, which doesnt so much keep the public safe as keep the municipalitys pockets lined at little extra expense. We cant undo the mass of regulation that was built over the last century. What we can do is simply sidestep it with peer-to-peer exchanges. Ive already used AirBnB. It may hurt some small hotels and B&Bs, but in my case it hurt the Days Hotel chain. The new model has some downsides. Uber contractors dont have the protections some cabbies do. But to a large extent thats still the force of regulation. Uber makes uber obsolete. In five years there will be no reason a contractor needs to go through Uber, rather than using a cheaper service that links them directly with patrons (like long haul truckers already use). And patrons will be just as protected by rating systems and comparative ratings. Basically the middle-man exists on the assumption that for individuals to do business is kludgy and difficult. That is an increasingly artificial distinction, one which is often defined exclusively by law. We dont want or need the level of regulation we have, and were rapidly sidestepping it. BBC - Capital - The people whose lives are being ruined by Airbnb buff.ly/1uo94Ph
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 01:35:17 +0000
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