When the more than 3,500 small bookshops throughout France joined together to protest at the competition an infinitely more competitive and efficient Amazon presented, the French government responded by passing a law banning Amazon and other online retailers from selling things on the internet free of postage charge. So what did Amazon do? You guessed: it started offering to send its books at the nominal postage charge of one penny.

In Spain, where the hotel industry exercises a powerful lobby, chains have begun to complain that they are losing out to visitors who are choosing to look for accommodation on Airbnb, the regional government of Madrid has taken the creative solution of deciding that privately owned apartments from now on must be booked for a minimum of five nights, bearing in mind that the average stay in the capital is for two nights.

The problem of legislating in this ad hoc way, perhaps with good intentions, or just responding to pressure from lobbies and business groups, is that it always backfires. Introducing artificial obstacles to prevent a market from growing is absurd: on the one hand it makes a mockery out of the law, showing to what extent certain economic interests lead to corruption. On the other hand, it simply makes newcomers to the sector more imaginative in their efforts to overcome artificial barriers through other methods, at the same time as encouraging or driving other players into the hidden economy, where their activities are harder to detect.

When the development or adoption of a technology threatens a given industry’s model or business, the only way it can survive in the long term is by adapting and looking critically at its value proposition. Ad hoc legislation is like putting a band-aid over a deep wound.

Models such as Airbnb and others are simply taking advantage of technology that reduces coordination costs significantly, allowing supply and demand to meet under more advantageous conditions. Before Airbnb, renting a private property was a complex and inconvenient affair, with few guarantees and a poor reputation. With the advent of Airbnb, apartment owners are now able to rent their properties easily and simply, positioning them at whatever level they see fit, and are even able to talk directly to their possible clients, humanizing the process, and usually meaning that guests look after their accommodation better.

It’s not unusual for the owner to receive his or her guests, telling them about the neighborhood, leaving them cold drinks, etc in a bid to create a bond that will encourage repeat business. This is a model that many people value highly, in contrast to their treatment at the hands of hotel staff. If you want to prevent a model like this developing, you are going to have to do more than just legislate on the basis of good intentions.

Thanks to lower coordination costs, formerly properties are now being made available. While the net result will likely be better use of the area defined by the supply and demand curve, and that will in turn probably produce benefits for users, trying to stop the process is quite simply absurd, and as the saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.