Interesting Links for 06-09-2023

[andrewducker]

1. The End of Airbnb in New York

(tags:housing newyork GoodNews )

2. The strange, secretive world of North Korean science fiction

(tags:NorthKorea society scifi )

3. Stalker found Japanese singer through reflection in her eyes

(tags:stalking location japan )

4. Study of over 80,000 UK couples finds that in love opposites don't actually attract

(tags:relationships psychology )

5. "AI took my job, literally"—Gizmodo fires Spanish staff amid switch to glitchy AI translator

(tags:ai translation jobs OhForFucksSake )

6. Misinformation about contraception on social media may be contributing to Scotland's record high abortion figures

(tags:disinformation contraception Scotland abortion OhForFucksSake )

7. The Nanohertz Gravitational-Wave Detection Explained

(tags:gravity research space )

Comments

[andrewducker]

The Tragedy of the Commons assumes a lack of regulation. What we have here is another example of how such tragedies don't tend to occur in real life, because people get together and regulate access to the commons, as they have done here.

Thinking further about this, this isn't about "should a number of people enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource such as a pasture, they will tend to over-use it, and may end up destroying its value altogether" - at no point has the value of whatever we're considering "the commons" here been destroyed. If anything, the value of the properties has gone up.

There's certainly economics going on here. But this is more about hoarding (a finite resource being bought out by the rich so they can sell it on to the poor at a large markup) and externalities (where the owners of party flats don't care about the noise they inflict on their neighbours).

[calimac]

Functionally, it's the same thing. If overuse causes you to lose the commons because it's physically been destroyed, and overuse causes you to lose the convenience of AirBNB because it has to be prohibited, either way you've lost it because of overuse. The why of the overuse is immaterial to the basic similarity.

And it's an economic loss, too. Not the market value of the properties, but the value of having an AirBNB rental market. That's an economic value, and it's been completely lost.

[jducoeur]

The Tragedy of the Commons assumes a lack of regulation. What we have here is another example of how such tragedies don't tend to occur in real life, because people get together and regulate access to the commons, as they have done here.

That's true, but it's also an illustration of the common failure mode of excessive, damaging regulation, and the sort of all-or-nothing thinking that is too often dominant nowadays.

It's absolutely the case that some localities have been blighted by excesses of AirBnB and the like. But most haven't -- in most places, it provides convenient places to stay in "hotel deserts", and gives folks a way to make some extra money. (I've at least once had my hash saved, when our house was rendered uninhabitable for a week: being able to rent a nearby AirBnB prevented a bad situation from becoming a true crisis.)

The right approach here, IMO, would have been more measured regulation. It should absolutely involve some sort of license, with a fee sufficient to cover the city's regulatory cost, that can be revoked by the city, whose quantity can be controlled, and can be limited in the number of licenses per person.

Properly managed, coupled with some gradually-evolving guidelines based on empirical evidence of the actual problems, would likely suffice, without this sort of a sledgehammer of regulation...