[TheForge] local codes

[Mike Spencer]

> 98% of the building code items I deal with every day are there for
> very good reasons.  The trouble is that most people don't know why
> the code item is there so they believe it's just big government.

RANT MODE ON:

Those reasons are:

  + To protect the builders.  If they can show they built it to code,
    they're not readily liable for shoddy work.

  + To protect the insurance companies.  If building is standardized,
    they can do actuarial numbers and come up with good predictive
    statistics without having to use judgment or do any engineering.

  + To protect the financial institutions holding mortgages. (And ghod
    forbid that you should be able to shelter yourself without a
    mortgage.) 

  + To flog builders' services and vendors' products.

The underlying concept -- protect the occupants (and possibly others)
from risks they're (putatively) unable to evaluate for themselves --
is laudable and, in the case of apartment buildings, office towers,
railway stations etc., that's a very good concept.  In the case of
individuals providing themselves with (minimally) shelter or
(typically) a home, the code functions according to the points above
enumerated.

The relation of the underlying concept to implementation in reality
resembles the connection between, say, elementary notions of
communalism/communism and Soviet state capitalism masquerading as
communism; or between simpleminded capitalism in an agrarian society
and contemporary neo-fascist, financial corporatism masquerading as
capitalism.

One of my friends, a builder, was, for a few years, on the committee
that reviews, expands, adjusts and updates the Canadian national code.
I once said much the same thing to him and he didn't turn a hair.  He
just said, "Yes, of course." and then regaled me with yarns of
petitions from vendors of building products and systems to have their
products added to the code as mandatory for domestic dwellings.  Some
of them were absurdly over the top and were rejected by the committee.
But the applicant vendors in all seriousness hoped to enlist the
building code to force everybody to buy one of their whatevers.

When I moved here, there was no building code in effect -- at least
not enforced in any way -- for single dwellings.  (I dunno about
commercial properties.)  I had a neighbor with negligible education
and a steady job at peon's wages.  He built a shack from used and
rough lumber, salvaged sashwork, chipboard, tarpaper etc.  It kept him
and his family warm, dry and cosy at a cost well within his severely
straightened means.  Today he'd be hassled half to death and, if he
persisted, jailed.

With a code in effect, you can live in a cardboard box, possibly in a
tent or under somebody's stairs [1] or you can jump through endless
hoops, pay fees, submit to inspections and bullying and front
something like $80 grand minimum to provide yourself shelter.  There's
no middle ground.  If you don't have a lot of money, you can choose
between being a street person (or possibly a slum dweller) or getting
yourself into debt (if you can) that you a have no hope of servicing
or paying off.

RANT MODE OFF.

So what's all this talk about concealed carry, guns 'n shit?  The
people pushing you around and picking your pocket and grabbing your
goods most of the time are legally mandated, ostensibly capitalist
institutions.  You gonna go out and f***ing shoot them?  Or what?


FWIW,
- Mike


[1]

http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/12/01/closing_store_has_them_at_loss_for_words/
I've seen the guy in question several times when visiting Wordsworth
Books.

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^