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Comment by pylua | Hacker News Reader

It's not so simple. There were previous articles posted on here months ago basically saying that the building standards are much higher in the United States in terms of permits and certifications and that is what is slowing things down. Sectors are heavily regulated in the United States which comes with a very high price tag, however, they are often done for the right reasons.

If American workers are expected to follow the rules but other countries have less strict rules with different tradeoffs, maybe the regulations need to be examined.

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A lot of those regulations also boil down to individualism and inability to balance social needs against individual desires. In the US, major infrastructure project that could serve hundreds of thousands of people can be held up by a handful of individuals whose property might be affected by the project. This sort of individual consideration is baked into most of our regulatory frameworks.

"for the right reason"

When companies have a choice to build in other countries then import product into the US, they will do that cost benefit analysis. If a country overly regulates and industry, it will just be made elsewhere.

When politicians pass laws that just cause jobs to be outsourced so they can say they are doing "the right thing" but not attempt to force other countries to follow, all you are doing is virtue signalling and killing jobs.

You don’t have to let imports flow into the country without assessing costs to that as well. These are all policy choices.

That’s protectionism and it makes us all poorer.

No, it doesn’t. Like any policy that affects a complex adaptive system it has winners and losers and elements of unpredictability.

Don’t worry I actually have a degree in economics, you don’t have to explain why you think that.

Doesn’t mean it’s a model that corresponds with reality, or that dictates policy choices.

That's the key thing -- not expecting other countries to follow the standard we set. At times it is also even the same values. It's absurd that we don't do this.

It’s important to differentiate between standards and regulation. It’s entirely possible that the US has far higher bureaucratic red tape to navigate that increases costs and time but doesn’t actually produce superior quality products.

Is there any evidence that the standards are actually higher and not just more expensive, time consuming,.and bureaucratic?

Both things can be true. I’m sure there are ways to streamline the bureaucracy. But if you ignore Chesterton’s fence you get Superfund sites dotting the landscape. The rules exist for reasons.

Rules always exist for a reason but as often as not the reason is to justify the existence of bureaucratic gatekeepers and not the actual stated reason for the rule.

Unless there is a lower incidence of workplace accidents and environmental contamination at US facilities as compared to equivalent Japanese facilities then the additional rules are pure dead weight loss. And I have not seen any evidence that our factories are any safer or cleaner than Japan's.

Some rules are put in place to prevent situations that are extremely unlikely to occur in the first place, but are more catastrophic when they happen. Trying to compare incident rates would not account for how well rounded a system of rules really is. I would suggest that the best course of action would be to follow the advice of our fellow countrymen who drafted these rules, then ask other countries to follow it if they want to sale products in our country.

Why would I trust the rules made by my own government if I can see that other more productive countries are building things better and faster than us?

> Rules always exist for a reason but as often as not the reason is to justify the existence of bureaucratic gatekeepers and not the actual stated reason for the rule.

No, that’s merely a reflection of your anarchistic and misanthropic worldview. Most people would not agree at all that “most rules” serve only to justify gatekeepers.

You are free to jump the fence and fall into the gorilla exhibit if you want but there is still a very good reason the rule exists. And the fact that you apparently see such rules as a “minority” speaks more to you than anything.

Here is one the articles I was referencing.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/28/phoenix-mic...

When I read through it again it I realized many problems seem similar to common issues in software projects.

I think if TW standards is good enough to build 3nm chips on an earth quake zone, it's good enough for US. We're talking about building leading edge semi conductor not housing, which granted TW is hilariously bad at.

Apparently that is not what the regulations say? I don't think us employees / employers are able to go against the regulations without legal consequences.

I'm more addressing the point that US building regulations (when it comes to fabs) has "higher standards" vs just being more onerous. Which your second sentence in original point addressed but I missed.

Having dealt with standards and regulations in the US the problem isn't so much the regulations as the people enforcing them are adversarial. And they don't care about the costs they are imposing. I've also heard trades in the US behave in adversarial ways towards each other that would get them banned from future work anywhere else.

Tidbit: The biggest driver of cost overruns is delays in construction. Adversarial permitting, trades, and the courts allowing disinterested parties to delay projects drives this in the US.

Recent one I saw. 2000 sqft vacant lot filled with trash and weeds remains undeveloped because it would take years to get the variances and permits to build on it.

I think US construction (and other industries) being permit heavy is just to screw the little man, and artificially inflate the cost with only big companies being able to navigate the expensive and byzantine bureaucratic processes. I could list a million examples, but first, let me ask you: Would you consider someone a good software dev because he has a lot of permits and certifications, and promises to build software according to some international ISO standard? Thought so. The same applies to buildings.

I remember one guy's blog post, who described his life as a do-everything contractor, who did septic tank installations. What he needed for the job was a shovel and a truck to carry the tanks to the site.

Then came the regulators, and essentially made his job illegal. He had to apply for a permit, submit plans, conduct a survey, and need a crew of specialists with expensive equipment to carry out his job. Basically turned what would be a nice one or two man job with a nice margin into a whole expensive ordeal, which only big companies could do. The irony was that said big companies employed hordes of unskilled and underpaid rubes who they worked to the bone.

From what I understood Japan has pretty strict rules and is also heavily regulated. Are you sure building standards are higher in the US than in Japan?

Those regulations are paid in blood, and we aren't going to accept any different.

All of them?

You betchya

At a previous job, planning regulations forced a mid 5 figure expense for a dumpster enclosure[0] complete with roof and handicapped access. You know, in case someone in a wheel chair or on crutches needs to pull a dumpster out for collection.

Whose blood wrote that regulation?

[0]Next to grandfathered buildings who just chain their dumpsters to the alleyway, of course.

That's a cool story, but not true in all of Arizona. I built in Arizona and without code inspections or anyone checking I follow regulations. They probably just tried to build in a fascist shithole like Maricopa or Pima county where people with such deranged regulatory thinking congregate for their mental illness self support group.

In my county we figured out that ' paid for in blood' was bullshit invented by corrupt inspectors and contractors and we voted to eliminate it. Draw a rectangle on a map and after that it's green light.

What do you mean by paid in blood? Who's blood?

The right reason is a preference, i.e. some in our state think the right reason is to prevent building so that manufacturing is done in other countries.

Probably not so much "higher" as "onerous"

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