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> A bureaucrat insisting that stacked containers are an eyesore, causing freight to pile up because trucks are stuck sitting on empty containers, thus causing a
by gouggoug 5y ago
> A bureaucrat insisting that stacked containers are an eyesore, causing freight to pile up because trucks are stuck sitting on empty containers, thus causing a cascading failure that destroys supply lines and brings down the economy. That certainly sounds like something that was in an early draft of Atlas Shrugged but got crossed out as too preposterous for anyone to take seriously.
This is a little disingenuous. From what I understand, this was a rule put in place a long time ago, in a different context. The ramifications of such rule under unprecedented stress weren't understood or foreseen. Infinitely stacked containers would probably be an eyesore to be honest.
Great they removed the rule, but don't forget about Chesterton's fence.
- YokoZar 5y agoChesterton's fence is satisfied here: it asks us to know why a rule was put into place so that we know we aren't missing something when we change it. In this case we do know the reason why: aesthetics. The side effects are just greater now, so out the rule goes.
- rsj_hn 5y agoyeah, stacking boxes X levels high is not some deep thing that requires philosophers to gather 'round and debate Chesterton's fence for too long.
- mcguire 5y agoWhat is the evidence that the reason is aesthetics? Other posters have claimed that it is a fire department ordinance.
- tuatoru 5y agoWhat would the consequences of an earthquake be?
- SilasX 5y agoI think the broader (meta-?)point of Chesterton's fence is that our beliefs about the reason for the fence can still be wrong because we lost the tacit knowledge that produced and kept the fence there. So even if the rule shows up in some "city aesthetic code" where they wrote down "yep more than two is ugly", it may very well be satisfying some other desideratum that no one wrote down. That's not to say this rule really does have other reasons, but you can't stop at "yup that's what our records show". And indeed, some of them mentioned possible safety issues that arise with greater depths.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Infinitely stacked containers would probably be an eyesore to be honest. Also, how high of a stack of containers do you feel safe working around in the next major SoCal earthquake?
- esturk 5y agoHyperbole aside, you can only stack as high as your crane can lift it which is also finite.