Comment by eldavido
11 hours ago
Yeah I think there are two problems
First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years.
Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty.
I run an electrical contractor, so this is not the least bit theoretical to me. The hassle of dealing with local government and PG&E for what should be routine things adds tremendous cost to doing business. Recent concrete example: it cost over $1,000 and two months to process a minor change to an electrical permit set, in Alameda (City). The actual change was moving some panels outside, a small revision to a plan that had already been checked and permitted. This required $1,400 in engineering fees, plus a ~$200 application fee to the City, and then the actual plan check and review charge of $650-700. It was probably one hour of actual work. The worst part was that Alameda outsources its plan check to a third party and I'm pretty sure the plans sat for two weeks on someone's desk at the City, before I asked for status, and then, an hour later, by "complete coincidence", it was sent to the outsourced plan checker.
If we could put a precise price on pollution, it would be a different story. It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.
> It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.
I keep hearing this, but it never happens. Despite attempts to get jurisdictions to race to the bottom, businesses simply follow the money/markets: I can bet you a hefty sum that Alameda will never go without electrical contractors.
> I can bet you a hefty sum that Alameda will never go without electrical contractors.
You *really* don't understand the issue then because no one is saying that there will be 0 electrical contractors.
Electrical contractors will continue to exist because demand will continue to exist, but the wait time to get the work done will increase due to not enough electrical contractors.
Or the work will be left undone because the owner doesn't have enough money to pay the few electrical contractors that remain.
Or the work will occur but will avoid all regulations because the cost of complying relative to the odds of being caught don't justify paying it.
That's a lot of words to say business won't be driven away by regulations.
3 replies →
Everyone just says F the permits and becomes a youtube academy engineer. Then you start seeing all the issues that the permit system was designed to fix.
Half my house was built less-than-safely by the previous owner because getting the permits for the structures would be too expensive, time-consuming, and maybe not even possible.
The increased costs (time and money) of permits really changes the risk-reward.
> China has more naval vessels than the US
... what?