As much as I often tend toward arguments for freer markets, it's pretty conclusively known that people are terrible at judging long-term risk.

Even with hedging of risks and liabilities involved in shoddy construction, even with information brokers in place to help people make informed decisions, even assuming ample construction of houses across the spectrum for all kinds of buyers, it definitely seems like without some kind of guiding hand that failure to consider long-term risks will lead to a lot of deaths.

What's worse is that a lot of the codes are in place to protect neighbors as well. Electrical wiring codes, for instance, are there to prevent fires. The hypothetical You might say that this turns into insurance and liability, but accurately judging the long-term risk and correlative damages sounds exactly like a government imposing regulations.

Sure. (1) They've never seen a shanty town, and (2) they make the same argument about banking regulations.

Building codes are, in fact, the market response to earlier problems with lots of houses burning and falling down. The fact that later generations who grew up with houses not burning or falling down don't have the insight to know this is not evidence that they're right.

And they always make the argument that it would be good for the poor, and it's always bullshit. The poor don't benefit from dying periodically because some jerk made a quicker buck than he otherwise would have.

The alternative to a shanty town is not a safe, well built suburb. It's homelessness or at least deeper poverty (pay more for housing = pay less for food).

You get shanty towns when people are too poor to afford anything else. People don't live in a shithole just for kicks, they do it because they have no choice. We shouldn't pretend this tradeoff doesn't exist.

Shanty downs reduce the incentive to build high quality structures. Basically there is little incentive to build structures out of sink with the property value of the land they occupy. And the value of land is dominated by the value of the infrastructure around it.

You can build a surprisingly nice house for 1,000$ worth of materials, but there is no incentive when you build in the middle of a shanty town.

Isn't the incentive to build a nice house for $1000 that you get to live in it?

Of course, that $1000 house costs a full year of wages from a person earning $3-4/day and spending almost all of it on essentials. And this ignores the fact that many shantytowns occur in areas where property rights are weakly enforced - build a nice house, and 20 people will show up claiming they own it. Even if you have the money, you might instead be spending it on your children's education or something of that nature.

Shantytowns are a result of poverty and nonexistent property rights. Building codes, even if they were enforced, would not magically enable shantytown dwellers to afford something better.

It's not just a question of weakly enforced property writes. If you have the nicest shack you are far more likely to be robbed etc.

Social disorder feeds off it's self, when you live in a shanty town and are likely to be robbed it is much more reasonably to spend an extra 5$ on alcohol and get to enjoy it vs invest it in stuff that you might not keep for vary long, do that once a week for 5 years and your talking about 1,300$. Some of the hidden advantages of building codes are allowing people to build nicer houses without standing out from their community.

I think we are in violent agreement - by "weakly enforced property rights" I was referring to the fact that you are likely to be robbed of your your house (or perhaps the $500 you saved up when you are halfway done).

The hidden advantage of building codes you describe only applies when everyone can afford that $1000 house.

Unfortunately, the way the 'market figures it out' involves thousands of people dying in order to get the point across to 'the market'.

Godwin's Law, HackerNews edition: as a non-tech policy discussion grows longer, the probability of a comment thread devolving into an argument between competing ideas of libertarian vs. interventionist market theologies approaches 1.

Well, that's kind of the underlying point of the article and the discussion around it.

Agreed, I was just trying to jocularly comment on the Things That Don't Exactly Belong On Hacker News aspect of it by pointing out that those conversations always end up in the same place.

And, in addition, these conversations tend to be rather shallow and un-anchored by fact. More an exhibition case for general philosophical predilections than a serious examination of the particular policy issue.

The tendency to degenerate into arguments over libertarianism predates Hacker News. Ron(?) Newman proposed it as “Newman’s Corollary to Godwin’s Law” over ten years ago.

Do you suppose that the government anticipated the need for building codes before anybody ever died?

There's a saying that the fire code is written in blood. Generally, most of the regulations are there because when they weren't, it resulted in some disaster that cost lives. If it didn't, there wouldn't be the political will to incur greater cost and complexity in construction.

That doesn't mean that the codes shouldn't be updated / refactored once in a while, but that's a pretty difficult thing to undertake, and there may not be political will...

I can't tell what rhetorical position you're trying to take, but I suspect, from my knowledge of building practices and codes in Richmond, Indiana from the 19th century to today, that the answer is that no, the government did not regulate building before it became all too clear that building needed to be regulated. All our old houses here are built like Sherman tanks - but that's because the ones that weren't built like Sherman tanks are long decayed and gone, and in some cases burned to the ground with loss of all on board. Electrification took a lot of people by surprise. I have some pretty horrible wiring in the attic myself (not live, though).

I've done some renovation work on old buildings. I recommend removing ALL of the old wire. There's nothing like looking at a shabby old wire and wondering if it is hot or not. Even worse, sometimes an idiot will try to reconnect that old wire, yes, I've seen them try it.

Rip all of it out.

Oh, it's on the list, trust me. I've got fossil infrastructure in here over a hundred years old - in a way I feel like I should get some archaeologists in to catalog it before I get it all out.

The scary thing is that the basement lights are still on the old wiring - roughly 1920's vintage. Fortunately, no gaslights left, although I do have one fitting in the upstairs sitting room!

You mean like the people who died to instigate those very building codes?

Sure... so who reacted first, the government or the capitalists?

Considering how many codes (building codes, health codes, etc.) started out as efforts in the private sector by the likes of insurance companies and restaurant reviewers, it seems that answer is would be the capitalists, most of the time.

So, if the government removed those legal restrictions, do you think those industries would move to make their operations more safe, or less expensive for themselves in the short term?

there are many who would classify some building codes as unnecessary and some as absolutely essential, but for others the difference between the two is just too much to fathom... and as a result of their brains hurting so much, or from ulterior motives, they come up with something completely asinine: remove all regulations, they're too hard, and let's just find out what happens!

turns out, most of the time that's actually too much for everyone else to fathom, frankly.