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A comment on Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for short-term rentals. Parent comment

Re:Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for... by fatbird on Thursday April 12, 2018 @12:05AM (#16817890)
I'm not sure why I should give the "correct free market response" any airtime at all, given that 1) it would appear to require making one of the top 5 Canadian cities into "scorched earth", meaning a wasteland of empty housing in order to drive out investment money so that... why? and 2) any one of a hundred or more demonstrable failures of free markets that have fueled the drive for regulation more than anything else over the same period.
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Re:Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for... by stale2002 on Thursday April 12, 2018 @06:42PM (#16825620)
Because having a bunch of free, empty apartments that investors paid for is wonderful! It means that they can be used and are available for all the productive things that building are, on the cheap.

If you could wave a magic wand and do the same thing for food and water wouldn't you do so?

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Re:Vancouver signs first agreement in Canada with Airbnb for... by fatbird on Thursday April 12, 2018 @07:13PM (#16825798)
If they fill up because they're cheap, that indicates market demand that will bring the investors back. You're not going to keep them out unless Vancouver becomes, in significant part, a ghost town.

Which has another cost: everyone here who owns their own property would see their most significant asset disappear as the value of their home plummeted along with all the investment properties.

If I could do the same for food, we'd soon live in a hellscape of rotten food.

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