> people own their stuff and they're damn well liable to do what they want to with it
Morally true, perhaps, but not legally the case.
It's another example of how laws are extremely difficult to enforce if they go against the public morality; an extreme example was how difficult it was to outlaw dueling until the fashion finally turned against the practice.
A more modern example is how most people really want laws against plagiarism instead of the copyright laws we actually have in most of the world: People get up in arms if someone plagiarizes someone else's work, but will gladly support copyright violators who are scrupulous about proper attribution.
A large number of people seem to think that's actually how the law works. This doesn't stop any prosecutions, but it makes the prosecutions no more effective than trying to bail out the Titanic with a colander.
I'd argue not even morally true. I support drug legalization, but I definitely want legal protections against someone else setting up a meth lab in the condo next to me. Externalities nearly always exist, and market imperfection makes it impossible to contract them away.
It's a genuinely thorny issue in this case, though. On the one hand, you can easily imagine mechanisms where allowing widespread commercial short term tenancy in your building would increase crime rates and put your own self and property at risk. At the same time, it's abhorrent to me to imagine my condo building saying that I can't have non-paying visitors over several nights per week, which would likely have identical effects.
Morally true, perhaps, but not legally the case.
It's another example of how laws are extremely difficult to enforce if they go against the public morality; an extreme example was how difficult it was to outlaw dueling until the fashion finally turned against the practice.
A more modern example is how most people really want laws against plagiarism instead of the copyright laws we actually have in most of the world: People get up in arms if someone plagiarizes someone else's work, but will gladly support copyright violators who are scrupulous about proper attribution.
A large number of people seem to think that's actually how the law works. This doesn't stop any prosecutions, but it makes the prosecutions no more effective than trying to bail out the Titanic with a colander.
So shall it be with this law, I predict.