“Ils ne se servent de la pensée que pour autoriser leurs injustices, et emploient les paroles que pour déguiser leurs pensées”From Wired:
(Men use thought only to justify their wrong doings, and employ speech only to conceal their thoughts)
Airbnb Risks Government Wrath by Turning Homes Into Restaurants
In tens of thousands of cities around the world, Airbnb has transformed home owners into unofficial innkeepers. Now it’s flirting with the idea of making them amateur restauranteurs.
Though the company is saying little about this experiment, Reuters reports that Airbnb is inviting hosts in San Francisco to hold dinner parties for strangers and charge them a fee. And a Google search turns up these listings for upcoming meals. It’s unclear whether these are part of the same program. But either way, Airbnb appears to be thinking about moving into the dining room. Because of Airbnb’s reach, that move could end up becoming popular. But it also promises to bring down the same wrath from regulators that its room-sharing service has attracted.
The original premise of Airbnb was basically: “I’m going away for the weekend. Would you like to rent my place?” Whether or not that’s still the prevailing version of room rentals on Airbnb has caused all sorts of trouble with city governments across the globe. But even more provocative is the idea of Airbnb specifically creating marketplaces for other services that don’t fit the model of selling what would otherwise sit idle. The move into meals seems more like Airbnb aspiring to become the connective tissue of offline life in general–and more like a direct shot at the concept of government regulation itself.
‘Completely Illegal’
In a recent post on Medium titled “Shared City,” Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky opined about a new golden age of urban living, a city where “people become micro-entrepreneurs, and local mom and pops flourish once again,” where “space isn’t wasted, but shared with others,” where “the economy implicitly runs along rails built by Airbnb.”
“Cities are the original sharing platforms,” he wrote. “They formed at ancient crossroads of trade, and grew through collaboration and sharing resources. But over time, they began to feel mass produced. We lived closer together, but drifted farther apart. But sharing in cities is back, and we want to help build this future.”
Chesky is talking about room-sharing, but he also seems to be reaching for a whole lot more. The company has never been shy about wrapping room rentals in an idealistic rhetoric of connection and community fostered by the internet. And it’s possible that dining is a first step toward realizing a more expansive vision. Airbnb declined to discuss its food service ambitions, but it wouldn’t be surprising, from a philosophical or a business perspective, if Airbnb was trying to become more than just a way to rent a room. It also won’t be surprising if they face serious resistance.
Regulators already claim that renting out rooms for short-term stays amounts to running an illegal hotel. That hasn’t stopped Airbnb from becoming wildly popular, and politicians have sometimes been reluctant to resist this popularity. But moving into the restaurant business would likely tip the balance back against the company. According to SF Weekly, San Francisco’s head of food safety said that Airbnb hosts selling food without a permit would be “completely illegal.” The San Francisco Department of Public Health’s Richard Lee told the paper that the city could fine hosts up to $3,000 for offering meals to paying guests....MORE
