Maybe I don't get it, and maybe that is why I'm not in the valley at a start up, but I don't really inherently trust that people are good. I don't believe that renting my house to strangers is a smart idea. I don't believe that someone who feels like driving people around should take me 35 miles to the airport. There are bad people out there folks. The formality around hotel and cab businesses and the barriers to entry serve to "protect" the consumer somewhat. Since it's hard to start a profitable hotel, you want to provide good service to customers and keep things bed bug free. If you paid good money for your cab token you probably wouldn't want to rape one of your fares and destroy that investment. Now these are kind of a straw man arguments, but the point I'm making is just because you can do things doesn't mean that you should. I also just think that business models like uber and airbnb can let people into the market that really should not or have no business being there. Of course the odds of something bad happening in a hotel vs airbnb or someone trashing your airbnb are likely very slim. Same goes with über vs cabs. However I would venture to say it's a safe bet that in most cases you are more likely to have a bad experience with the "disrupt" businesses than an established and bureaucratic one.

I think that it should probably be decided by the market, and I would love to be wrong about this. I just don't think that I am. Maybe if I were 10 years younger and didn't have kids, but at my current place in life, I'm calling a cab to take me to a hotel, and I don't have house guests that aren't really or like family to me.