legal law

so what is the status now with the law?there's an article i think last week that was talking about how half of the airbnb rentals in new york are illegal andyou guys talk a good game about working with government. are youreally? first of all it's not illegal everywhere, it's legal in most places in the world. half the listings are not illegal new york. i don't know like it's much more nuanced.

it depends on the type of building. all thesedifferent things. it never occurred to me that there would be restrictions on somebody letting someone else in their home and it's still kinda surprises me. youknow we operate in thirty thousand cities and i would meet people in new york and we hear the stories about like completely changing the, changing theirlives. on airbnb ninety percent of people renting, it's probably more then ninety percent, are renting the homes they live in whenthey're not there. whether it's a bedroom

or their entire place. and i can't speak for everyone the city,not everyone in the city is supportive of airbnb. but many, many, many people in city hall of new york are incredibly supportive inthe mayor's office and outside the mayor's office of what we're doing. and they understand that half the people on airbnb are using the money they make on airbnb to pay for the homes they're already in. government should movefrom a screening mechanism to a place of last recourse.

cities can't screen as well astechnology can screen now. now companies have these magical thingscalled reputation systems. and you can build the currency of trustonline. when you're bringing somebody into the home you live in, you're gonnadeeply screen and care about the people in your home. if you actually look at like the historymany technology, like the automobile. the automobile had lots of issues with government relations before. because it was made for a world of horses. atm's, it's like banks were fighting atm's. vhs cassettes.

there are so many things that havebeen disruptive forces. ultimately we want to be a force forgood. and we want to protect consumers. and we want to cooperate with governments. we do think this business should be regulated. i want this business to be regulated. i thinkthat's fine. there's a difference between regulated and being prohibited. there's a big difference between these 2. i think what the sharing economy is, is something actually bigger then even the sharing economy. what it is,is this the thing after mass production i don't know for sure, at all, but it verywell could be one of the great

inventions in human history. like itreally could be. but if you actually look at the history of human inventions. what the industrial revolution createdwas a multi hundred-year, like world, where everything was the same.so we live in a world where we had three television shows. weconsumed the same physical products. and even a hotel was a mass-producedroom. conrad hilton had bibles inall the hotel rooms all around the world. it was like american travel experience exported around the world. and i thinkwe're gonna start to live in this world

where things aren't once size fit all. and the two words thatcome to mind are local and personal. i think people are gonna more independent. they're gonna be contractors. one of our goals at airbnb it to create one day a million entrepreneurs, or a million micro entrepreneurs. and ithink this is something that's really, really profound. up