Road to Hell Paved with Good Intentions, an example
Posted by xau 3 years, 5 months ago to Philosophy
My wife and I own a property on Lake Tahoe that we stumbled upon in the aftermath of the 2008 real estate meltdown; it's a longer story, of relevance here is that we have it available for short term rentals. My wife who manages this learned that managing airbnb requests directly yields a much better guest experience, as well as higher revenue.
Alas, as the area became popular for short-term rentals, tensions with locals rose. In our experience, the direct contact to the owner, as well as our ability to choose who may lease, kept nuisances with neighbors at a minimum. When there were issues, they could be swiftly addressed.
The county stepped in and started imposing a variety of fees and regulations. I consider regulations mostly an increase in barriers to entry. That is, the folks who truly only want to do a short-term rental on occasion and are okay with modest revenue, are the ones pushed out of the market. Price increases for all involved follow.
Our property was generating very good revenue, and while the overhead was a nuisance, it was manageable.
Then, the county came up with what appeared to be a reasonable rule to many: have a local representative. The motivation is obvious: if there's a concern, someone local can address it; it also helps channel revenue to the local community. Except that's not how it has worked. By requiring a local representative, we were all but forced to engage a local management company. The result has been: fewer bookings, less satisfied guests, a rise in complaints by neighbors, with those complaints not being properly addressed; the guests pay more when they come, but margins are down substantially. And, no, it's not the particular management company; it's the result of the regulation that introduces distortions into market dynamics.
What prompted me to post this was a note I saw on our kitchen table that was a warning notice by the county that was sent in the mail that we didn't have a local representative for the property. Which of course we do, but apparently the management company missed putting that disclosure on some spot where it ought to be or some bureaucratic mixup.
No need to feel sorry for us, we can deal with this. I post this in this forum as food for thought and reference how Atlas Shrugged has pointed to the little things that add up to discourage productive activities, because of good intentions by bureaucrats.
My question - and that's in part why I post this in the philosophy section: how does one discuss a topic like this as "therapy" rather than just egging one another on about the ills of the world outside the Gulch?
Alas, as the area became popular for short-term rentals, tensions with locals rose. In our experience, the direct contact to the owner, as well as our ability to choose who may lease, kept nuisances with neighbors at a minimum. When there were issues, they could be swiftly addressed.
The county stepped in and started imposing a variety of fees and regulations. I consider regulations mostly an increase in barriers to entry. That is, the folks who truly only want to do a short-term rental on occasion and are okay with modest revenue, are the ones pushed out of the market. Price increases for all involved follow.
Our property was generating very good revenue, and while the overhead was a nuisance, it was manageable.
Then, the county came up with what appeared to be a reasonable rule to many: have a local representative. The motivation is obvious: if there's a concern, someone local can address it; it also helps channel revenue to the local community. Except that's not how it has worked. By requiring a local representative, we were all but forced to engage a local management company. The result has been: fewer bookings, less satisfied guests, a rise in complaints by neighbors, with those complaints not being properly addressed; the guests pay more when they come, but margins are down substantially. And, no, it's not the particular management company; it's the result of the regulation that introduces distortions into market dynamics.
What prompted me to post this was a note I saw on our kitchen table that was a warning notice by the county that was sent in the mail that we didn't have a local representative for the property. Which of course we do, but apparently the management company missed putting that disclosure on some spot where it ought to be or some bureaucratic mixup.
No need to feel sorry for us, we can deal with this. I post this in this forum as food for thought and reference how Atlas Shrugged has pointed to the little things that add up to discourage productive activities, because of good intentions by bureaucrats.
My question - and that's in part why I post this in the philosophy section: how does one discuss a topic like this as "therapy" rather than just egging one another on about the ills of the world outside the Gulch?
You also have the property managers fighting against you. They probably prompted the meddling in the first place to eliminate you as competition.
Get together with other owners who are tired of the looting and meddling, and strike back against it or you will never be free of the looters.
In the context of Atlas Shrugged, do you deal with the cards, fight and try to succeed (Dagny) or move on / vanish (Galt).
The problem is that the problem spreads until there is no place to go for you and others like you.
If Rand was writing AS today, where would she have Galt go that is hidden?
When the bottom drops out today, the result will be much worse than Rand could have imagined, and recovery will be much more difficult, imo.
I could imagine looters in government using a EMP to destroy all unshielded devices to maintain their control.
In today's version of the book, I think it would still be Galt's Gulch. Important to those coming to the Gulch is that you only learn about it once you are ready. No one else must know about it. In that spirit, no one in their right mind would actually discuss the details of a true Gulch on this forum as it is publicly accessible (and if it were not, you couldn't trust that it wasn't infiltrated by Big Brother). So you have to limit ourselves to concepts for the most part.
Having a real Gulch no one knows about it is, in some ways, hiding in plain sight. After all, Galt's Gulch was in Colorado, just impossible to notice.
I don't think a true Gulch is even possible anymore, even if the tech in AS used to keep Rand's Gulch hidden were possible (which it still isn't). Once we see the Gulch in AS is simply a literary device to help make a point we will see hiding in plain sight is all that's left.
Good luck to you and your wife, xau.
Specifically in property rentals. The management 'industry' works closely with gov to make renting very complex, rules, regulations, forms, penalties. This discourages private individuals from doing it themselves, result, they need to go to a manager. The manager gets paid by the owner, works for and represents the owner, on paper, but in reality they work only for themselves/ the industry.
A claim is that it is to protect the tenant. Yes, bad tenants get protected from rent increases and eviction, good tenants pay for the consequences of bad tenants.
In general, the vast spread of the welfare state in health, education, unemployment benefits, free this, free that. What is free to one gets paid for by another plus markups.