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Re:Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb by baddox on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @06:25PM (#9542374)
> the nature of living in a society with humans is that you sometimes have to take situations on a case-by-case basis, and cannot have a single set of rules that will guide you to correct action in all circumstances.

Which sounds like a great reason to not have a rule prohibiting short-term occupants in residential zones.

Re:Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb by TeMPOraL on Wednesday May 13, 2015 @09:33PM (#9543019)
Look at it the other way. If you have a short-term tenant that behaves, your neighbors probably won't notice, and even if they do, they won't care. It's normal that sometimes you want a friend / family member / (boy|girl)friend to stay over. It's entirely fair to make a blanket ban on subletting but not enforce it too eagerly. This way, you're taking the responsibility for people which you invited to stay.
Re:Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb by baddox on Thursday May 14, 2015 @02:33AM (#9543732)
That might work in practice, depending on the community culture. But I am not generally a fan of prosecutorial discretion because of how ridiculously easy it makes unfair enforcement.
Re:Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb by TeMPOraL on Thursday May 14, 2015 @08:27AM (#9544683)
> But I am not generally a fan of prosecutorial discretion because of how ridiculously easy it makes unfair enforcement.

I consider it to be a lubricant in the engine of law. You can't run law to the letter, because defining the law is an AI-complete problem. The law tends to have more corner cases the more detailed you make it, and by executing it unconditionally, with maximum efficiency, you're going to harm a lot of innocent people. On the other hand, too much grease, and the engine won't run at all.

That's why I often remark about the importance of trust on a societal level, and my dislike towards the current trend of replacing trust with trustless systems. Trust is what keeps society together, and what allows it to work without humans having godlike introspection and cognitive powers.

Re:Santa Monica council votes 7-0 to crack down on Airbnb by mercer on Thursday May 14, 2015 @07:50AM (#9544512)
I'd say that the whole problem of having short-term tenants is precisely that you're pretty much forced to come up with 'a single set of rules' to force them to behave, due to transitory and impersonal nature of it.

The organic nature of case-by-case resolution of issues pretty much requires a long-term tenant that has some for of long-term relationship to the property and neighbors. Social pressure and personal responsibility come into play.

It's the difference (roughly) between a teacher-student and a parent-child relationship. In the former case, the (usual) lack of personal ties requires explicit rules. In the latter case, a lot of rules and conflict-resolution is more organic and case-by-case.