There's a great irony in calling renters "leeches" while trying to forcibly interfere between them and their customers to get a bigger cut of the transaction.

They are leeches and we should tax rentiers. Tax them out of existence. Or as near as we can get.

As Keynes said the euthanasia of the rentier, the functionless "investor" is to be welcomed.

edit: to the poster below

Many airbnb are not people "renting on a weekend when they go on holiday". It's a mini hotel. The former I don't mind, the latter should be taxed out of existence.

Your comment about groceries is dire. Production of food is elastic. Production of land is not. Taxing those who simply try to be middle men to be, yes, a rentier is a good thing. Not to take a cut but to get rid of them.

So many bad comments on HN that fail to understand elasticity and how prices are set. I'm off.

> Many airbnb are not people "renting on a weekend when they go on holiday". It's a mini hotel. The former I don't mind, the latter should be taxed out of existence.

1. What percentage of Airbnb users belong to each category? Why do you ignore the former and hope 'they all get their fingers badly burned when rates rise'?

2. You still have provided no argument as to why the latter should be 'taxed out of existence'.

> Your comment about groceries is dire. Production of food is elastic. Production of land is not.

This is irrelevant to the point you and I were discussing, namely, that restricting the supply of something will not magically lower its price. It works just as well with any other supply-inelastic good or service.

> Taxing those who simply try to be middle men to be, yes, a rentier is a good thing.

Can you clarify what you mean by 'those who simply try to be middle men'?

> So many bad comments on HN that fail to understand elasticity and how prices are set. I'm off.

1. It's a bit ironic for you to make this accusation when you're literally advocating for taxing an entire economic sector 'out of existence'.

2. I made no comments about elasticity of supply. You did.

Uh... Keynes never said we should tax people who rent their homes out of existence. That idea is quite nonsensical and counterproductive from an economic point of view. It's like saying we should tax groceries out of existence to reduce food prices.

Keynes did actually say the rentier class should be liquidated. The landlord is the ideal rentier. A grocer is not necessarily a rentier, they add value by providing a service. Rental income is purely a privilege of ownership, received due to a granted title, similar to patent and copyright.

It's okay he's writing on hacker news, where economics goes to die.

You think the solution to high rent prices is to reduce the number of renters and restrict the supply of properties available for rent?

Someone wasn't paying attention in econ class.

Econ 101 sucks. But you contradict yourself as econ 101 always states supply and demand.

AirBnb is for short-term rentals only. It does not target people in Montreal looking for 12 month rolling tenancies. But it does reduce supply as landlords move from supplying 12 month places to airbnb.

If we made life harder for airbnb supply would go up of rentals for families. Or landlords would sell up reducing prices and allowing families who presently rent to buy.

Yes there are some people on hacker news who just want to get their 200k and not have to worry about commitment. I don't care about them, they can sort themselves out. I want access for families to local schools.

The people offering this "service" just want to make a quick buck for very little work. They bring nothing to the community and make life harder for many families.