You Cannot Do Only One Thing
Garrett James Hardin framed the eponymous Hardin’s First Law of Ecology: “You cannot do only one thing”. He meant that you can’t change one element of an ecosystem without having unintended consequences on other parts of the ecosystem. Of course, that “law” doesn’t apply just to ecology, which is why it is quoted so often. Take AirBnb, the site/app for renting your room/house to complete strangers for short durations. Despite the “how do you trust a stranger?” problem, the site has become a hit. It appealed to people with spare rooms and travelers who didn’t want to spend on expensive hotels. On a per-day basis, room rents on AirBnb would be higher than if you rented via an old fashioned long term lease. That’s obvious. Soon Hardin’s law comes into play: people decided it was better to rent their houses exclusively via AirBnb because they made more money! European cities began to find that rooms for long term leases were very hard to come by since everyone was renting via Air