Category: Sharing Economy

Just ban all AirBnBs in your city and anything similar. If someone wants to rent temporary rooms they can be regulated as a hotel.

I guarantee rent prices would crash overnight in most major cities.

A lot of condos and so on are now being built FOR people who want to AirBnB.

(I am fundraising to determine how much I’ll write this year. If you value my writing and want more of it, please consider donating.)

If you want to be a little kinder, make it so that people can AirBnB their primary residence and one other place and that’s it, and only individuals/sole proprietorships can AirBnB. If it’s really about some additional income, then great.

This all may seem harsh, but rental price increases in a lot of cities are out of control, and in many major cities there is now a housing bubble far more advanced than the bubble in 2008. AirBnB isn’t the only cause, but it’s a major one. Cities are for residents first. High rental prices destroy people’s lives, while having to pay a bit more to stay at a hotel is either a business expense or a trip you didn’t actually have to take, while residents need somewhere to live.

Make some laws forbidding people to own empty residences; don’t allow foreigners to own residences or locals to own residences that are held beneficially by foreigners, shut down foreign money flows, and you’ve got the rest of a solution.

Housing: Owned or rented, is a utility. Treating it as an investment or a way to get rich is intensely harmful, and because there is nothing that is quite as rentier has housing (even the word comes from renting), it is also really bad for the economy in the longer run.

AirBnB, like Uber and Lyft, is a leech. A parasite which harms its host.

Sensible countries and municipalities will put it down or put it on a leash.

DONATE OR SUBSCRIBE

The Lyft and Uber Endgame: Oligopoly Prices, Impoverished Workers

By Ian Welsh

On April 2, 2019

Comments

The problem with ridesharing is simple.

Lyft and Uber are losing a lot of money.

They are doing so to increase market share: To drive taxis out of business.

That they are losing money, and the fact that they are highly valued means that they, and all their investors, expect that they will eventually stop losing money and start making it hand over fist.

In other words, having driven their competitors largely out of business, they will now raise prices.

Once they are an oligopoly, they will charge oligopoly prices.

They may be slightly lower than taxi prices in the end, because unlike taxi owners and drivers they don’t have to pay the capital costs (obviously not using that term in the way Silicon Valley does) of their vehicles, and they can pay near-starvation wages to drivers as long as the job market at the bottom end remains loose (ie. for the forseeable future. Despite the unemployment rate, the truth is, it’s still hard to get jobs near the bottom).

In other words, Uber and Lyft will squeeze additional profits out of their drivers and provide a very small decrease in prices (perhaps).

This, in manufacturing, is known as dumping: Providing something at less than the cost in order to drive competitors out of business, with the intention of then raising prices later. It’s generally illegal, though often not enforced, just as the simple fact is that most of what Uber and Lyft have done is straight up illegal–against most municipal tax regulations and much labor law.

So we’ll get cheaper rides, for now, in exchange for accepting an oligopoly which crushes it workers and provides little price benefit (and a lot less safety), later.

Doesn’t seem like much of a deal, or progress.

The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

France Arrests Uber Executives

By Ian Welsh

On June 29, 2015

Comments

To recap: French Taxi drivers went on strike, beat cars with metal baseball bats, and damn near shut down Paris’s airport.

As a result, France arrested two French Uber executives. It has also been seizing the cars of Uber drivers.

Unions work. Violence, done smart, works.

(French truck drivers, when they want something, will en-masse park their rigs in the middle of the street, shutting down traffic, etc.)

You receive good wages only when there is a tight labor market. That can be generally, or it can be “your profession/group in specific.” (Professional associations are just upscale unions who pretend they aren’t, unions being declasse.)

If you enjoyed this article, and want me to write more, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.

Category: Sharing Economy

One Way to Fix Soaring Rent Prices

The Lyft and Uber Endgame: Oligopoly Prices, Impoverished Workers

France Arrests Uber Executives