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Comment by user3939382 | Hacker News Reader

> You don't piss off gov't regulators

Yep. If you deal with them you learn quickly that all that “splitting hairs” stuff you see in Hollywood dramas buys you nothing. For a lot of administrative compliance, with the state or Feds, they are judge jury and executioner and the rules are what they say they are. Unless you have a lot of money and influence don’t play games with them.

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> Unless you have a lot of money and influence don’t play games with them.

There are a fair number of companies that do these dark patterns that have a lot of money and influence though.

Yup, the same rules apply to building inspectors. You better hope you get the good one because they can twist codes around on a whim and they are always right.

Depends on the inspector and the contractor. More than once I’ve had contractors successfully win arguments with building inspectors in the wrong.

You're certainly right for personal advice, but does the New York Times not have a lot of money? They've certainly got the influence bit covered. Once you can buy enough of your own bureaucrats to tie up their bureaucrats, regulators' power isn't so clear.

More powerful than that though is that you don't want the regulators to have to do any work. Once they have work to do they are insanely efficient, at least when it involves punishing the person who made them do work.

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