The Airbnb point this article tries to make is incoherent. Airbnb operates in defiance of hotel regulations, it says. You can see how this harms society: someone's house got trashed! Except that's not what hotel regulations address. People trash hotel rooms all the time. That's a cost of being in the hotel business. For this article to make sense, at least w.r.t. Airbnb, it'd have to be arguing for people to need licenses to stay in hotel rooms.

There are regulatory issues Airbnb does face, but you'd like to think an article taking startups like Airbnb to task would actually know what they are. This one doesn't.