Devils advocate: are food standards also a terrible imposition? The government insists on coming around to all the restaurants in the city and inspecting them to make sure that no-one will be poisoned or killed by the food they eat. How dare they stand in between a willing buyer and seller. Right? Right?
Food standards, restaurant inspections, building codes, health and safety codes... the list goes on. Are they all illegitimate attempts to stand between a willing buyer and seller?
Inspections are there because large institutions don't always take the care they should, and as a consumer I sure as hell want -somebody- to look into it. If it weren't a government institution then I'd expect some sort of company to do it, and any restaurant that hadn't gotten inspected I would avoid.
On the other hand I -don't- worry when I use Air-BnB, because it has reviews that signify quality, and because there's not much that can go wrong with sleeping on a couch.
You're not going to convince me that I would still buy raw milk, or that pasteurized milk would be unavailable, in the absence of FDA regulation.
There's a competitive advantage to labeling food, and there's no stopping companies from labeling food in the absence of food labeling regulations. The most trusted organic certification is from a for-profit certification company, Quality Assurance International. McDonald's published nutrition information before it was required by any law. Intentionally incorrect labeling is already covered by fraud and tort law.
Of course, this doesn't make health codes good, necessarily.
But what I'm more interested in - what kinds of prohibitions lead to speakeasies/organized crime, and what don't, particuarly on the scale of the Prohibition, with Al Capone, Elliot Ness, etc. ??
As you can probably tell from my phrasing, I do think it is. I wish I had a cite, but I do remember reading an article about the actual, monetary value of good long term relations with neighbors... there is an argument to be made that short term rentals are selling not just the unit but the neighborhood itself, and doing some harm to the neighborhood in the process. If that is the case, this is an externality that could be legitimately regulated.
this was a common refrain of slave holders - it was a pure market mechanism, the buyer and seller agreed on a price, why does the govt care?
There is no legitimate justification to infringe on a contract between a willing buyer and a willing seller, but to actually fight these crackdowns you have to spend lots of $$$ on local political campaigns in every municipality. Easier said than done. Unless that massive lobbying investment (or at least a publicity campaign, like SOPA boycotts) happen the entrenched interests win by default and lots of peer-to-peer transactions will move to gray/black market.
Prohibition always creates speakeasies and the organized crime to protect them.
EDIT: To address "devil advocates", yes, most regulation mandated and enforced by government is a terrible imposition. Self-regulation that preserves consumer choice is a much better idea. You want to pay extra $$$ for a better level of service / protection /etc? Make it an optional line item with explicit cost.