Eh. I mean, I think it is worth it for policymakers to hear this stuff and approach it with a spirit of curiosity. Like, what happened to you that you're _so_ negative about _any_ regulation?
I think anti-regulatory extremists, if dropped back in 1850s England in a neighborhood next to one of the "dark Satanic mills", would suddenly reali…
Eh. I mean, I think it is worth it for policymakers to hear this stuff and approach it with a spirit of curiosity. Like, what happened to you that you're _so_ negative about _any_ regulation?
I think anti-regulatory extremists, if dropped back in 1850s England in a neighborhood next to one of the "dark Satanic mills", would suddenly realize that _some_ types of regulation are actually useful.
But let me tell you my own experience with local regulators. My spouse and I bought a house in 2017. We are only the second owners. It was built in 1940, and one of the members of the team that built our neighborhood bought a house in the neighborhood, and raised his family here. Died in the house at age 97. In the 77 years he lived here, he did a lot of un-permitted work. We set about bringing everything in the house up to code. (Among other things, we gutted and replaced the _entire_ HVAC and electrical systems, both of which were insane -- there was knob-and-tube wiring with all of its cotton insulation rotted away, so basically just bare copper, with blown-in foam rubber insulation losse on top of it; there was no actual air return to the furnace because termites had eaten the supports around it and it collapsed; it's _amazing_ the guy made it to 97 and didn't get killed by his own sloppy construction.) We also had to tear off and rebuild the entire roof (like not just the shingles, the decking and rafters).
Along the way, we learned that we _could not trust_ anything that the Building Department told us until it was confirmed by senior staff in writing. If I trusted something a junior person told me, and then spent some four figure amount of money having my contractor / architect / engineer team update plans based on what that junior person told me, there was something like a 50/50 chance that a senior person would later look at those plans and say, "oh, no, this is wrong, you have to change it again".
And that is _infuriating_. If their junior people are giving bad information, then they need to deal with disciplining and training those people. Our projects were delayed by _months_, and I ended up out something like $12k, by the time I was done fixing things that were _their f***ing fault_.
This kind of thing makes one want to become The Joker. I get why people have the impulse to burn down the whole system. I think they're wrong, and what we need is a government that has more "state capacity". But in the moment when you're dealing with something like this, it inspires _incandescent rage_.
it’s important to listen comprehendingly and empathetically, and not just ignore, of course. good old regulations. of course, of course. i’m mostly responding to uninformed, non-specific throw-government-overboard attitudes, as someone whose parents both worked for the Federal government and who did not choose that field in part due to what it had done to their use of language (now I see their value though)
Yeah, I grew up north of DC. My dad was an officer in the Public Health Service. Did both medical research and treatment of patients (through the public clinic at the NIH campus on the east side of Baltimore). My uncle was a lawyer for the Maryland government, and my aunt worked at NOAA.
I really wish we could make the WaPo series "Who is Government?" required reading for all these yahoos who think government is useless.
cool, yeah, my dad worked in child support for HHS and my mom worked at HUD, one of my best friends worked at NOAA doing all this cool Law of the Sea stuff that’s fascinating…my uncle and aunt worked at State, my uncle on Antarctica issues and my aunt, whose name people know but I don’t want to drop it, as a nuclear specialist. And so on…the government does a lot! Of necessary stuff! For people!
Eh. I mean, I think it is worth it for policymakers to hear this stuff and approach it with a spirit of curiosity. Like, what happened to you that you're _so_ negative about _any_ regulation?
I think anti-regulatory extremists, if dropped back in 1850s England in a neighborhood next to one of the "dark Satanic mills", would suddenly realize that _some_ types of regulation are actually useful.
But let me tell you my own experience with local regulators. My spouse and I bought a house in 2017. We are only the second owners. It was built in 1940, and one of the members of the team that built our neighborhood bought a house in the neighborhood, and raised his family here. Died in the house at age 97. In the 77 years he lived here, he did a lot of un-permitted work. We set about bringing everything in the house up to code. (Among other things, we gutted and replaced the _entire_ HVAC and electrical systems, both of which were insane -- there was knob-and-tube wiring with all of its cotton insulation rotted away, so basically just bare copper, with blown-in foam rubber insulation losse on top of it; there was no actual air return to the furnace because termites had eaten the supports around it and it collapsed; it's _amazing_ the guy made it to 97 and didn't get killed by his own sloppy construction.) We also had to tear off and rebuild the entire roof (like not just the shingles, the decking and rafters).
Along the way, we learned that we _could not trust_ anything that the Building Department told us until it was confirmed by senior staff in writing. If I trusted something a junior person told me, and then spent some four figure amount of money having my contractor / architect / engineer team update plans based on what that junior person told me, there was something like a 50/50 chance that a senior person would later look at those plans and say, "oh, no, this is wrong, you have to change it again".
And that is _infuriating_. If their junior people are giving bad information, then they need to deal with disciplining and training those people. Our projects were delayed by _months_, and I ended up out something like $12k, by the time I was done fixing things that were _their f***ing fault_.
This kind of thing makes one want to become The Joker. I get why people have the impulse to burn down the whole system. I think they're wrong, and what we need is a government that has more "state capacity". But in the moment when you're dealing with something like this, it inspires _incandescent rage_.
it’s important to listen comprehendingly and empathetically, and not just ignore, of course. good old regulations. of course, of course. i’m mostly responding to uninformed, non-specific throw-government-overboard attitudes, as someone whose parents both worked for the Federal government and who did not choose that field in part due to what it had done to their use of language (now I see their value though)
Yeah, I grew up north of DC. My dad was an officer in the Public Health Service. Did both medical research and treatment of patients (through the public clinic at the NIH campus on the east side of Baltimore). My uncle was a lawyer for the Maryland government, and my aunt worked at NOAA.
I really wish we could make the WaPo series "Who is Government?" required reading for all these yahoos who think government is useless.
https://ourpublicservice.org/blog/who-is-government-series-the-washington-post-event-recap/
cool, yeah, my dad worked in child support for HHS and my mom worked at HUD, one of my best friends worked at NOAA doing all this cool Law of the Sea stuff that’s fascinating…my uncle and aunt worked at State, my uncle on Antarctica issues and my aunt, whose name people know but I don’t want to drop it, as a nuclear specialist. And so on…the government does a lot! Of necessary stuff! For people!