, Columnist
Airbnb Is a Risky Neighbor
Airbnb has a good business model with a bad legal problem in cities such as New York.
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What's not to like about the sharing economy? You take assets lying fallow (cars, homes, spare moments) and rent them out on a short-term basis to people in need. Essentially, we're ramping up the productivity of a whole lot of capital.
One group of critics is obvious: the folks who already make a living driving cars and renting rooms. Sharing cuts into their revenue, and over the last few years, they've been moving aggressively to stop it -- first by getting their thoroughly captured regulators to go after the sharing upstarts, and now with a public-relations campaign; right now they're making somewhat hysterical claims about the lack of insurance for Uber and Lyft rides.