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Or just a have a free market and abolish building codes.

by mruts 8y ago

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
Have a new Kowloon be built?
adrianN 8y ago
Putting the reasons behind building codes aside, the free market doesn't favor social mixing. Profits are maximized by enclaves for the rich and undesirables are pushed out of the city center. I think it's quite important for people of different social classes to live in close proximity and for their children to play together and go to the same schools.
onion2k 8y ago
Increasing the housing supply isn't working. Wealthy landlords can afford buy new houses at a good price for the builder, and then the landlord rents them out at the current rental price, so rental prices don't go down and people can't afford to compete with the prices landlords are willing to pay for houses which is keeping house prices inflated. Unless something significant happens to regulate the housing market we're going to end up with property being something that no individual owns, and everyone rents a place to live from a corporation.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
alasdair_ 8y ago
> Or just a have a free market and abolish building codes. Building codes reduce transaction costs by avoiding having to inspect every single thing in a building every single time the ownership changes. Building codes massively reduce the load on the legal system that would otherwise be required from all the different people suing each other to determine fault when something inevitably breaks. Building codes reduce death from things like fires because they make sure things like fire exits exist. There are LOTS of countries with minimal building codes. Take "free market" Somalia for instance. Would you seriously switch with them?
- icebraining 8y ago
  Can we drop the tired "why don't you move to Somalia" trope? It's fallacious and it's disrespectful towards the people of Somalia.
  - Konnstann 8y ago
    How is it disrespectful? The majority of the people in Somalia probably share his opinion, and the ones that don't are profiting from the corruption there.
    - icebraining 8y ago
      It's disrespectful because there's no actual attempt to draw a serious comparison between the two cases; Somalia is used as a crude stereotype, and the reality of the people living there, and the real progress made in the last years is ignored. But hey, maybe I'm wrong: tell me, what specific drawbacks do you see in the building standards of Mogadishu or Hargeisa vis-a-vis Berlin?

Or just a have a free market and abolish building codes.

by mruts 8y ago

Or just a have a free market and abolish building codes.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago

Have a new Kowloon be built?

adrianN 8y ago

Putting the reasons behind building codes aside, the free market doesn't favor social mixing. Profits are maximized by enclaves for the rich and undesirables are pushed out of the city center. I think it's quite important for people of different social classes to live in close proximity and for their children to play together and go to the same schools.

onion2k 8y ago

Increasing the housing supply isn't working. Wealthy landlords can afford buy new houses at a good price for the builder, and then the landlord rents them out at the current rental price, so rental prices don't go down and people can't afford to compete with the prices landlords are willing to pay for houses which is keeping house prices inflated. Unless something significant happens to regulate the housing market we're going to end up with property being something that no individual owns, and everyone rents a place to live from a corporation.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

alasdair_ 8y ago

> Or just a have a free market and abolish building codes. Building codes reduce transaction costs by avoiding having to inspect every single thing in a building every single time the ownership changes. Building codes massively reduce the load on the legal system that would otherwise be required from all the different people suing each other to determine fault when something inevitably breaks. Building codes reduce death from things like fires because they make sure things like fire exits exist. There are LOTS of countries with minimal building codes. Take "free market" Somalia for instance. Would you seriously switch with them?

icebraining 8y ago
Can we drop the tired "why don't you move to Somalia" trope? It's fallacious and it's disrespectful towards the people of Somalia.
- Konnstann 8y ago
  How is it disrespectful? The majority of the people in Somalia probably share his opinion, and the ones that don't are profiting from the corruption there.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    It's disrespectful because there's no actual attempt to draw a serious comparison between the two cases; Somalia is used as a crude stereotype, and the reality of the people living there, and the real progress made in the last years is ignored. But hey, maybe I'm wrong: tell me, what specific drawbacks do you see in the building standards of Mogadishu or Hargeisa vis-a-vis Berlin?