As someone building his own house right now, I exactly understand the complexities here. It's outrageous. Many of the laws are counterproductive and the use of certain products is lobbied for by the companies making them.

Drywall, insulation, plumbing, electrical all these products work their way into the laws encoded in building codes. Many of the companies have members on the committees of these "non-profit" organizations.

It's terrible. It's part of the reason houses cost so much.

Everyone wants their piece of the pie. If you want to house yourself, first you must feed everyone else.

At the same time, we've seen the result of deregulation in New Zealand, which in part resulted in the Leaky Homes Crisis [1]. Developers tend to put profit first, if the house falls apart 10 years later it doesn't matter to the developer or the builder, they already made their money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_homes_crisis

A big flaw of modern society is the most experienced experts we rely on for industry regulations inevitably have a bias towards their industry.

Look in any industry and their regulating bodies and often it's a revolving door of key executives giving each other a slap on the wrist now and then and not effectively regulating or punishing clear wrongdoing.

Holy shit, this is absolutely outrageous.