>and never had an issue as long as my work was up to code

Permits cost tens of thousands of dollars, and months of processing in my area. They’re happy to sign off at the end after they’ve extracted the maximum they can from you.

Sounds more like a problem with your area, or maybe you're doing different type of work compared to what I'm doing with my house (residential vs commercial maybe?). I've been applying for various kinds of permits (building, electrical, plumbing, still need to get mechanical) and in all those cases, I applied online and the permit was issued same or the next day (& precon inspections that I went through have all been scheduled for the next business day). Total cost was in the ballpark of $1000. This is in WA. I did not need any structural changes so the process for the building permit was cheaper & quicker than it could've been. I also had some work done that did require structural engineer & submitting drawings - it was a fraction of the remodel cost anyway.

OTOH, insisting on permits potentially saved my ass at least in one case - I had a contractor remodel my bathroom say that "they do everything up to code". Their work did not pass inspections on the first try (had to fix things up both for plumbing and electrical).

And that is assuming you can get permits - which in many jurisdictions can take years to figure out, and multiple major changes.

The intent in many jurisdictions is to tarpit change as much as possible and it shows.

It isn't the permits themselves which are usually the problem.

There are likely some valuable skills and services that go into that permit price. I doubt it's pure grift.

It never is. It would've been eliminated otherwise. There's some core of value being delivered, wrapped in a layer of corruption. The question is, what's the relative size of the core to the grift layer?

Permit process also protects the community.

I was paying for a house to be built by a contractor who, it turns out, screwed up the permitting process and didn't do a hydrological survey of the erosion pattern on the land. The town yanked his permit to build.

I was grumpy, but when I drove by I could see clearly what the problem was: he hadn't planned for drainage at all, and the new construction and alteration of the terrain had already caused rainwater to start pooling at the base of my future neighbor's foundation. If he'd been allowed to continue unhindered, he would basically have guaranteed my neighbor's property would have been destroyed in 5 years.

Permits are a local government issue. Maybe your local government is extremely reasonable and punctual when it comes to building permits, while my local government is lazy or stupid or corrupt. Maybe you have no problem with building permits because you don't live in a county where the authorities slow-walk anyone who doesn't buy them a case of whisky.