Re:The Rise of Airbnb's Full-Time Landlords
by TeMPOraL on Tuesday November 10, 2015 @01:05PM
(#10541066)
Rating system is actually the one thing that I think is good about Uber (though firing your emp^H^H^Hcontractor if he drops below 4.3/5 is not).
Social consequences are not good for everything, but there are a lot of areas when there are better than economic approach. The problem is that economic incentives are much stronger than social, so the latter can be easily destroyed by the former. The classic example would be the fact that you absolutely, positively don't want to pay people for donating blood - it immediately leads to contamination of blood banks, as people replace the sense of duty with an opportunity for free cash, and thus stop caring about things like not donating blood when they are sick.
Since social incentives are fragile, you want to defend them in the areas they work better than economic ones - hence the opposition to AirBnB.
Social consequences are not good for everything, but there are a lot of areas when there are better than economic approach. The problem is that economic incentives are much stronger than social, so the latter can be easily destroyed by the former. The classic example would be the fact that you absolutely, positively don't want to pay people for donating blood - it immediately leads to contamination of blood banks, as people replace the sense of duty with an opportunity for free cash, and thus stop caring about things like not donating blood when they are sick.
Since social incentives are fragile, you want to defend them in the areas they work better than economic ones - hence the opposition to AirBnB.