Matt Breunig worries it will:
Because successful firms have long tenures and many employees, it is easier to subject them to anti-discrimination laws. You can more easily prove that they are being discriminatory because you can present evidence of long-running patterns. They also have the organizational capacity to adopt and enforce anti-discriminatory policies internally.
All of this goes away in a sharing economy world where everyone is essentially an individual contractor selling directly to a consumer. The present slate of anti-discrimination employment laws do not reach Airbnb consumers or any consumer for that matter. They only really bind employers hiring employees into traditional firms. But more than that, it’s not obvious to me how you could practically restructure the law to reach people who directly purchase things through the sharing economy. What are you supposed to do: track their purchases and see how often they buy from sellers of a given race?
Previous Dish on the sharing economy here, here, here, and here.
The Dish 