Airbnb Externalities

Can you give an example of an externality unique to AirBnB landlords that is pushed onto others and the others are unable to force the landlord into accepting responsibility for it?

By definition, driving up the price is never an externality. The actual externalities from AirBnB are the noise, danger and lack of community that these apartments impose on their neighbors. Even these would not really be externalities if the entire building knew about and allowed AirBnB renting. But in practice, almost all buildings forbid it.

The problem is externalities. Not convenience.

Because, like Uber, for customers it is a massive improvement over the alternative. ... The level of myopia here is staggering.It is indeed. You, the host, and AirBnB are splitting the gains from ignoring laws designed to internalize externalities. Instead you celebrate privatizing benefits and pushing costs onto others. Yes, it benefits you in the short run. Most anti-social behavior does.Do you teach your children that it is okay for a company to dump toxic waste in a river as lon

The term that's involved in this is "externality": costs that are imposed on people not involved in the actual transaction (use of the place for payment).http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExternalityYou rightly point out, that, for instance, in a crowded apartment building, having something like a dynamite storage facility would probably be a bad idea.However, other things might be annoying too, such as having children or

Because they impose externalities on the people around them.

Here's the thing. Economic transactions can have externalities -- costs to someone not a party to the transaction that are not reflected in the cost of the good or service in the transaction. The "sharing economy" has loads of externalities. It's like saying, if you don't like the bonfire, don't participate to it, when you've set the fire downwind of someone and there's smoke blowing in their tent.

In such an ideal world, the neighbors could then charge the Airbnb-owner for the value he derives from their presence making the AirBnb a desirable option (after all, AirBnB markets its services to people who want to "live like locals), and for any negative externalities imposed upon them by the AirBnb, such as increased traffic, liability risks, etc.

People love _using_ Airbnb, but don't want an Airbnb rental next to their home. The negative externalities remind me of cars: super useful for me, super annoying to you.

I live in a downtown residential building one block away from a hotel, so that's not always the case. Of course, some communities may choose to prohibit AirBNB altogether.I think the bigger issue is if the externalities imposed by normal usage are so high that, when properly internalized, AirBNB no longer presents a compelling value proposition in the majority of cases. This is certainly possible.From AirBNB's perspective, perhaps they just fight the internalization as hard as po