You're right, but you're also thinking way too big-picture were saving face and corruption play a daily role. You're missing the crazy chaos that happens on a daily basis on a small scale - which is both positive and negative. This same friend for instance decided to open up a restaurant. It's on rooftop area with a few other bars.

It's zoned as residential property but that's not stopping anyone. In general, as long as you're not bothering anything no one cares about any regulations (again, on the small scale. If you you're big and have money and people want to fuck you over then there is no escaping it. On paper this is a socialist system and they have the laundry list of regulation to back it up).

He doesn't get permits to build walls, to put in a bar, to tear out half the place and put in something completely new. There is no health inspection, liquor license or firesafety inspection. It's basically, go rent a property, hire a bunch of people to do the manual labor, remodel and you're cookin'!

In a way the little guy has a leg up on all the commercial chains that do have to follow the rules

And everything in China kinda works like that. No months of planning, chasing investors, getting permits, getting licenses pussy-footing around and figuring out your supply chain. They just go and do it. It's the bootstrapper's dream.

Along the way some walls collapse and some people get food poisoning, but this place is changing at a astronomical rate. You can't contain it

That is, I think, how the US used to be prior to the 60s.

Take a look at the reminescences of this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Gergel

While the attempt of cover-up was ridiculous, the event as a whole doesn't seem worse than Spain's derailment that happened two years later, in which many more were killed, and for which all blame was laid on the driver.

Yep. Or the Valencia metro accident, where there is some quite convincing evidence that the authorities hid evidence and instructed employees to give a convenient version in their declarations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valencia_Metro_derailment#Subs...

Or the myriad deadly Amtrak incidents that dwarf that toll.

Unless by "dwarf" you mean "less than 10% more" and by "myriad" you mean "exactly one", I invite you to join those of us who live in the real world. You don't have to like Amtrak, but there's plenty of nonsense on the Internet without you adding to it.

> the event as a whole doesn't seem worse than Spain's derailment that happened two years later

Spanish authorities didn't tried to censor the accident, nor did they tried to bury the wreckage with corpses and human remains still mangled within the wagons.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8658959...

> in which many more were killed

Honestly, with all the censorship forced by the chinese communist party regarding the accident, how can anyone really tell?

In fact, how many accidents have occurred since then that were successfully covered up?

I'm not interested in playing the part of a Yorkshireman, and I'm certainly not about to defend the CPC. I wouldn't trade my citizenship of a Western country for any other.

All I'm saying is that your example doesn't make your case that Western governments are that much better at tackling these kinds of potential problems, or that they don't try to cover them up, often in ways that prevent the problem from being fixed.

If you want to argue that they have a train collision a month that we just don't know about, while I vehemently condemn censorship for itself, I can't accept lack of proof as proof that it happened!

I guess all these countries don't care about safety either...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Saxony-Anhalt_train_colli...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalfsen_train_crash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Chester,_Pennsylvania,_tr...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermalle-sous-Huy_train_collis...

Well also checks and balances is a core concept of American government. It's designed to prevent an overly strong central government albeit at the expense of getting things done.