6 ms·

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may not have critical structural problems today, but in 5 to 10 years, you may have to reconsider your infrastructure. By doing shoddy work, you have a higher rate of catastrophic failure, larger carbon footprint and many other issues.

HPsquared 6y ago
In the nuclear industry this is called "procedural use and adherence". It's one thing to have a written "de jure" way of doing things, but quite another to actually follow said rules.
mav3rick 6y ago
I like the stereotyping of the entire "East" as one incompetent shit hole. The last I checked infrastructure in the US is crumbling. Each new thing also costs an insane bloated amount leading to a refusal to build new infrastructure altogether. Being in the west doesn't guarantee many things and being in the east doesn't either.
- ta17711771 6y ago
  It's crumbling because it hasn't been maintained since the 50s-70s, not because it's shittily built. To be fair.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    The new Metro extension out of DC to Dulles airport is literally crumbling... concrete is failing, the maintenance yard is sinking into the ground, plus it's over-budget and over-time. For the concrete, the apparent answer is "we'll inspect it more" instead of holding the contractor accountable and making them replace it. Because reasons.
  - nradov 6y ago
    Boston recently spent $21B on the Big Dig project. It was shittily built. It leaks, and the tunnel ceiling collapsed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig#Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig#Problems
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    An exception to this is the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_Univer...
- netsharc 6y ago
  To add to your voice, sure, the "west" may have the reputation of good engineering, and the "east" have one of "shoddy slap-bang it all together", but one needs to keep up the vigilance to maintain a good reputation. Just to make you think about western engineering and oversight, here's one word: 737MAX.
  - mav3rick 6y ago
    My point was to judge on a case by case basis. If we don't do that, how can we expect the common layman to.
awakeasleep 6y ago
I believe regulation is an essential tool for society, but it is not the whole story- morality plays as large a part. Once the regulation is set, it can easily be undermined. BPA was banned by regulation, so industry developed analogue chemicals with the same properties and began using them. Certain aspects of concrete & steel are regulated, so unethical effort goes into subverting the idea of the law while following the letter. Or they start sourcing the steel from outside the jurisdiction of the regulation (eg radioactive material is disposed of in China by mixing with steel made for export https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-growing-global-threat-of-radioactive-scrap-metal/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-growing-global...) Not trying to be disagreeable, it's just a thought that has been bothering me.
- ethanbond 6y ago
  But you’re agreeing. Variable morality is a problem. The solution is (imperfect as it often is, as BPA ex illustrates) effective regulation. Effective regulation is synonymous with “making individual moral differences irrelevant.”
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > Effective regulation is synonymous with “making individual moral differences irrelevant.” I think it's more illuminating to phrase the problem in terms of externalities. Things need to be set up to ensure that the profit motive cannot lead to the following thinking: Rather than spending $100m on doing the project to a high safety standard, I'll spend $70m, introducing a mere 1% chance of catastrophic failure and hundreds of deaths. 1% is of course far too high a probability, especially if this line of thinking is being followed in hundreds of different projects, but the odds may look fine to the manager. Without regulation, companies can be incentivised to take corner-cutting risks where they profit by the upside, and we all bear risk-of-death on the downside (failing aircraft, collapsing buildings, etc). With regulation, companies are required to meet a certain bar. Reputational harm can also incentivise companies to invest in safety, but it's not enough; regulation is needed.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
kiba 6y ago
And yet the construction here in the US have reputation of doing shoddy works, not doing work on time, and being more expensive than they should be, while skirting any regulations any way they can. Or at least that's my impression.
- dominotw 6y ago
  > skirting any regulations any way they can. Here in india we don't skirt regulations because no one knows what regulations are supposed be followed. :)
- Lammy 6y ago
  That is my impression of certain projects/contractors at least, like the replacement eastern span of the Bay Bridge and how it immediately developer those foundation leaks, cracked welds, failed bolts, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the_San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_th...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- vinay427 6y ago
  They do have that reputation, as in many western countries to varying degrees, but there's large difference (in my mind) between corruption that affects finances and corruption that affects safety. The latter is rather rare in a place like the US, and when it happens, the problem will generally be discovered and fixed before people die. In the case that the problem results in casualties, there is almost always a process of oversight, media and public attention, and adapting of protocols to mitigate the risk of a similar situation in the future.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may not have critical structural problems today, but in 5 to 10 years, you may have to reconsider your infrastructure. By doing shoddy work, you have a higher rate of catastrophic failure, larger carbon footprint and many other issues. High labor costs in the western world drive construction techniques. We (try to) build stuff that never breaks because we can't afford to fix things if they break. Low labor costs mean structures can be replaced more often and built for a shorter lifetime. It's folly to pretend that those engineers designing shoddy Chinese apartment complexes that occasionally fall down during construction don't have the same formulas and simulation tools at their disposal. They just have different inputs and design constraints. They know that if they build 100 buildings and ten fall down it's still cheaper than 100 better buildings where none fall down. There's no point in building a 100yr building if it's gonna be bulldozed in ten.
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  It's hard to think of a more critical design constraint than "don't collapse while there are people in the building."
- kube-system 6y ago
  Hiring engineers and following their plans is expensive, if you can skip one or both of those, you can undercut your competitors bids.
- tridentlead 6y ago
  Except for all the people that die when it falls down...
  - Blackthorn 6y ago
    In some places, life is considered cheap.
- 6y ago
yingw787 6y ago
Apparently there's chatter in recent days on China's internet regarding the Three Gorges Dam, and how it's setting / warping due to reservoir backpressure (pictures in link): https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-warn-of-chinas-three-gorges-dam-demise_2994235.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-warn-of-chinas-three-g... Apparently there's heavy rainfall this year. 300-400 million people live below the dam. I'm unfamiliar with domestic travel restrictions within China, but I can't imagine it's gotten better with the ongoing pandemic, so you can't really plan ahead and move out of the way until the rainy season ends. I want to believe there's something wrong with the camera that made that specific image distorted. Or that the government recognizes the problem and is fixing it. I like it when things are boring.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- madaxe_again 6y ago
  Yeah, that’s just a crummy image that looks like it’s been projected onto terrain. You see the same wavy effect on stuff all over google earth, which that appears to be from.
  - CommieBobDole 6y ago
    Yep, the issue here is that it's projecting it over the old terrain height maps that were created before the dam was built. In Google Earth Desktop, you can fix this by unchecking "terrain" and can see that the base image is perfectly straight.
  - recursive 6y ago
    https://www.google.com/maps/place/Three+Gorges+Dam+Scenic+Area/@30.8174251,110.998735,678m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sThree+Gorges+Dam+china!3m4!1s0x368477b3750c94f5:0xacbcac6e2574b3ee!8m2!3d30.809097!4d111.062576 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Three+Gorges+Dam+Scenic+Ar... Here's an extreme shot from the edge of the dam. Obviously it didn't deform that much and stay standing.
- konschubert 6y ago
peteradio 6y ago
My folks witnessed a death as an adhoc concrete structure was pulled from a pier onto a person below. I guess noone anticipated someone would use the structure as a boat tie off point. By happenstance the person crushed was the person who put up the structure some decade or more back. I don't know if its callous but I only remarked that kind of structure would almost certainly be illegal in the US.
- selimthegrim 6y ago
  A sad inadvertent application of Hammurabi's Code.
chaostheory 6y ago
Everyone should be worried then that the airlines have outsourced aircraft maintenance and repair to other countries where the FAA has little to no oversight. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113877784 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113877...
mrep 6y ago
I'm assuming it's regulation, cause I'm super happy the utility poles around me don't look like this [0]. There's even comments about how people die because nothing is grounded there. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gn16k8/cable_management_in_brazil/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gn16k8/cable_managemen...
- stickfigure 6y ago
  I'm not an expert, but those look to my eyes like data (cable/phone) wires, not power distribution. A crazy rats' nest, but probably not dangerous? I'm curious to know how it got to that point. Do they have 3 or 4 competing cable tv services in the neighborhood, all with their own infrastructure?
- botwriter 6y ago
  meh seen worse in cambodia
walrus01 6y ago
From a western perspective, if you travel to Pakistan and observe the safety/quality of electrical wiring and gas heating/pipe systems, they're shockingly poor. Harsh economic realities mean that not everyone can wire an office or house to the same safety and quality standards that we would see in North America. In my personal opinion the only reason why there are not a constant amount of electrical fires killing people is that brick and concrete structures don't catch on fire very well. The same shoddy electrical wiring in a north american environment with wood-frame construction would be a catastrophe. The same cost cutting and compromise approach should not be taken to civil aviation.
- qtplatypus 6y ago
  Over the long term however the bad quality of the utility safety is a cost. Both in people killed and repairs needing to be made. It is another case in which it is cheaper to be rich.
starpilot 6y ago
What I've found is that outside of these fields (civil/mechanical/chemical engineering), people greatly underestimate how much math goes into projects like these. I'm a programmer now, but I used to be a mechanical engineer in aerospace. We used far, far more math in a hands-on way in the latter. We'd calculate bolt stacks: https://www.dimensionalconsulting.com/bolt-stacks.html https://www.dimensionalconsulting.com/bolt-stacks.html on every bolt in a helicopter. There were a lot of bolts.
BurningFrog 6y ago
You can also correlate the safety and quality of life with wealth. Rich societies can afford to spend resources to make things safe. If the mechanism is government regulations, a strict liability legal system, and/or a civic minded population is secondary.

HPsquared 6y ago

In the nuclear industry this is called "procedural use and adherence". It's one thing to have a written "de jure" way of doing things, but quite another to actually follow said rules.

mav3rick 6y ago

I like the stereotyping of the entire "East" as one incompetent shit hole. The last I checked infrastructure in the US is crumbling. Each new thing also costs an insane bloated amount leading to a refusal to build new infrastructure altogether. Being in the west doesn't guarantee many things and being in the east doesn't either.

ta17711771 6y ago
It's crumbling because it hasn't been maintained since the 50s-70s, not because it's shittily built. To be fair.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  The new Metro extension out of DC to Dulles airport is literally crumbling... concrete is failing, the maintenance yard is sinking into the ground, plus it's over-budget and over-time. For the concrete, the apparent answer is "we'll inspect it more" instead of holding the contractor accountable and making them replace it. Because reasons.
- nradov 6y ago
  Boston recently spent $21B on the Big Dig project. It was shittily built. It leaks, and the tunnel ceiling collapsed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig#Problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig#Problems
- lostlogin 6y ago
  An exception to this is the Florida International University pedestrian bridge collapse. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_Univer...
netsharc 6y ago
To add to your voice, sure, the "west" may have the reputation of good engineering, and the "east" have one of "shoddy slap-bang it all together", but one needs to keep up the vigilance to maintain a good reputation. Just to make you think about western engineering and oversight, here's one word: 737MAX.
- mav3rick 6y ago
  My point was to judge on a case by case basis. If we don't do that, how can we expect the common layman to.

awakeasleep 6y ago

I believe regulation is an essential tool for society, but it is not the whole story- morality plays as large a part. Once the regulation is set, it can easily be undermined. BPA was banned by regulation, so industry developed analogue chemicals with the same properties and began using them. Certain aspects of concrete & steel are regulated, so unethical effort goes into subverting the idea of the law while following the letter. Or they start sourcing the steel from outside the jurisdiction of the regulation (eg radioactive material is disposed of in China by mixing with steel made for export https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-growing-global-threat-of-radioactive-scrap-metal/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-growing-global...) Not trying to be disagreeable, it's just a thought that has been bothering me.

ethanbond 6y ago
But you’re agreeing. Variable morality is a problem. The solution is (imperfect as it often is, as BPA ex illustrates) effective regulation. Effective regulation is synonymous with “making individual moral differences irrelevant.”
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > Effective regulation is synonymous with “making individual moral differences irrelevant.” I think it's more illuminating to phrase the problem in terms of externalities. Things need to be set up to ensure that the profit motive cannot lead to the following thinking: Rather than spending $100m on doing the project to a high safety standard, I'll spend $70m, introducing a mere 1% chance of catastrophic failure and hundreds of deaths. 1% is of course far too high a probability, especially if this line of thinking is being followed in hundreds of different projects, but the odds may look fine to the manager. Without regulation, companies can be incentivised to take corner-cutting risks where they profit by the upside, and we all bear risk-of-death on the downside (failing aircraft, collapsing buildings, etc). With regulation, companies are required to meet a certain bar. Reputational harm can also incentivise companies to invest in safety, but it's not enough; regulation is needed.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago

kiba 6y ago

And yet the construction here in the US have reputation of doing shoddy works, not doing work on time, and being more expensive than they should be, while skirting any regulations any way they can. Or at least that's my impression.

dominotw 6y ago
> skirting any regulations any way they can. Here in india we don't skirt regulations because no one knows what regulations are supposed be followed. :)
Lammy 6y ago
That is my impression of certain projects/contractors at least, like the replacement eastern span of the Bay Bridge and how it immediately developer those foundation leaks, cracked welds, failed bolts, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the_San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_th...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vinay427 6y ago
They do have that reputation, as in many western countries to varying degrees, but there's large difference (in my mind) between corruption that affects finances and corruption that affects safety. The latter is rather rare in a place like the US, and when it happens, the problem will generally be discovered and fixed before people die. In the case that the problem results in casualties, there is almost always a process of oversight, media and public attention, and adapting of protocols to mitigate the risk of a similar situation in the future.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

>Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may not have critical structural problems today, but in 5 to 10 years, you may have to reconsider your infrastructure. By doing shoddy work, you have a higher rate of catastrophic failure, larger carbon footprint and many other issues. High labor costs in the western world drive construction techniques. We (try to) build stuff that never breaks because we can't afford to fix things if they break. Low labor costs mean structures can be replaced more often and built for a shorter lifetime. It's folly to pretend that those engineers designing shoddy Chinese apartment complexes that occasionally fall down during construction don't have the same formulas and simulation tools at their disposal. They just have different inputs and design constraints. They know that if they build 100 buildings and ten fall down it's still cheaper than 100 better buildings where none fall down. There's no point in building a 100yr building if it's gonna be bulldozed in ten.

HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
It's hard to think of a more critical design constraint than "don't collapse while there are people in the building."
kube-system 6y ago
Hiring engineers and following their plans is expensive, if you can skip one or both of those, you can undercut your competitors bids.
tridentlead 6y ago
Except for all the people that die when it falls down...
- Blackthorn 6y ago
  In some places, life is considered cheap.
6y ago

yingw787 6y ago

Apparently there's chatter in recent days on China's internet regarding the Three Gorges Dam, and how it's setting / warping due to reservoir backpressure (pictures in link): https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-warn-of-chinas-three-gorges-dam-demise_2994235.html https://www.theepochtimes.com/experts-warn-of-chinas-three-g... Apparently there's heavy rainfall this year. 300-400 million people live below the dam. I'm unfamiliar with domestic travel restrictions within China, but I can't imagine it's gotten better with the ongoing pandemic, so you can't really plan ahead and move out of the way until the rainy season ends. I want to believe there's something wrong with the camera that made that specific image distorted. Or that the government recognizes the problem and is fixing it. I like it when things are boring.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
madaxe_again 6y ago
Yeah, that’s just a crummy image that looks like it’s been projected onto terrain. You see the same wavy effect on stuff all over google earth, which that appears to be from.
- CommieBobDole 6y ago
  Yep, the issue here is that it's projecting it over the old terrain height maps that were created before the dam was built. In Google Earth Desktop, you can fix this by unchecking "terrain" and can see that the base image is perfectly straight.
- recursive 6y ago
  https://www.google.com/maps/place/Three+Gorges+Dam+Scenic+Area/@30.8174251,110.998735,678m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m8!1m2!2m1!1sThree+Gorges+Dam+china!3m4!1s0x368477b3750c94f5:0xacbcac6e2574b3ee!8m2!3d30.809097!4d111.062576 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Three+Gorges+Dam+Scenic+Ar... Here's an extreme shot from the edge of the dam. Obviously it didn't deform that much and stay standing.
konschubert 6y ago

peteradio 6y ago

My folks witnessed a death as an adhoc concrete structure was pulled from a pier onto a person below. I guess noone anticipated someone would use the structure as a boat tie off point. By happenstance the person crushed was the person who put up the structure some decade or more back. I don't know if its callous but I only remarked that kind of structure would almost certainly be illegal in the US.

selimthegrim 6y ago
A sad inadvertent application of Hammurabi's Code.

chaostheory 6y ago

Everyone should be worried then that the airlines have outsourced aircraft maintenance and repair to other countries where the FAA has little to no oversight. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113877784 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113877...

mrep 6y ago

I'm assuming it's regulation, cause I'm super happy the utility poles around me don't look like this [0]. There's even comments about how people die because nothing is grounded there. [0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gn16k8/cable_management_in_brazil/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gn16k8/cable_managemen...

stickfigure 6y ago
I'm not an expert, but those look to my eyes like data (cable/phone) wires, not power distribution. A crazy rats' nest, but probably not dangerous? I'm curious to know how it got to that point. Do they have 3 or 4 competing cable tv services in the neighborhood, all with their own infrastructure?
botwriter 6y ago
meh seen worse in cambodia

walrus01 6y ago

From a western perspective, if you travel to Pakistan and observe the safety/quality of electrical wiring and gas heating/pipe systems, they're shockingly poor. Harsh economic realities mean that not everyone can wire an office or house to the same safety and quality standards that we would see in North America. In my personal opinion the only reason why there are not a constant amount of electrical fires killing people is that brick and concrete structures don't catch on fire very well. The same shoddy electrical wiring in a north american environment with wood-frame construction would be a catastrophe. The same cost cutting and compromise approach should not be taken to civil aviation.

qtplatypus 6y ago
Over the long term however the bad quality of the utility safety is a cost. Both in people killed and repairs needing to be made. It is another case in which it is cheaper to be rich.

starpilot 6y ago

What I've found is that outside of these fields (civil/mechanical/chemical engineering), people greatly underestimate how much math goes into projects like these. I'm a programmer now, but I used to be a mechanical engineer in aerospace. We used far, far more math in a hands-on way in the latter. We'd calculate bolt stacks: https://www.dimensionalconsulting.com/bolt-stacks.html https://www.dimensionalconsulting.com/bolt-stacks.html on every bolt in a helicopter. There were a lot of bolts.

BurningFrog 6y ago

You can also correlate the safety and quality of life with wealth. Rich societies can afford to spend resources to make things safe. If the mechanism is government regulations, a strict liability legal system, and/or a civic minded population is secondary.