I would prefer to just sleep at night, instead of calling the cops every weekend and waiting for them to put the party out. Personal preference.

I don't understand. The purpose of the penalty would be to prevent the noise from happening, not simply to raise money after it already happened.

How long do you think it takes to sue and/or fine someone over this sort of thing? It's not like if 3 of your neighbors vote to file a complaint about the noise your bank account gets debited $100 within the hour. Have you ever been involved in a legal dispute in rel life? Even a small claims court issue can play out over months.

I still do not understand. Your criticism applies to literally all rules and laws in any society.

Resolving everything on a case-by-case basis means high transaction costs. A blanket ban on some less-than-popular activity is arguably economically inefficient, but the net cost to individuals is negligible, whereas the cost to someone negatively affected by the unpopular activity is high, and we can all (except perhaps for you) imagine being the one stuck with the problem.

Say this is happening to you: you're trying to sleep but the short-term renters next door are having a loud party, and although you already asked them to stop they ignored you. You lie awake fuming about it, but planning for how you would like to get the property owner fined isn't doing anything to stop the noise right now. Furthermore, even if the property owner is fined, then it's still possible that in 6 months time he'll rent the place out to some jerks who'll do the same thing. So, the property owner may get fined again, but the jerks don't care, because they're jerks - it's oin a stolen credit card, they're leaving the country, they're high on drugs and are incapable of realizing that this will result in bad credit, whatever. Do you want to go through the same process of filing a complain and eventually having the property owner fined every time this happens, or do you just want to get with your neighbors and say 'fuck it, no more short-term rentals in our building/street' at the next HOA or neighborhood meeting?

Because enforcing a thousand tiny regulations like, no higher than x decibels, no more than 10 people, and no leaving doors to common areas open is difficult. A short term tenant finds it easier to get a way with breaking these rules because he knows he will be gone tomorrow, and it is more difficult for people to associate him with a particular apartment if he's only been there for a few days. Most cities realized that length of tenancy is a good heuristic, so to make enforcement easier they developed zoning laws around it.

There are real objective difference between living in a building with short term vs long term tenants, and there is no easy way to force short term tenants to behave like long term tenants.

Have you ever had to deal with a noisy neighbor? In SF, there is no recourse. Tenants can't be evicted and the police don't care. About the only thing you can do is to enter an escalating war of noise making. Short term rentals exacerbate the problem because there is no incentive for the renters or neighbors to play nicely.

Are you saying there is recourse for short-term rentals, but not for noise violations? If that's the case for some odd reason, then it needs to change.

There is no reason for short term renters or their neighbors to behave. For instance, at one AirBnB rental, my upstairs neighbor used to do jumping jacks in boots - maybe just to piss off the people below, I don't know. For that matter, renters often party late into the night on weekdays. Renters on AirBnB at least have a few options - they can contact AirBnB, they can file a chargeback, or they can eat the loss and move.