4 ms·

But imagine how it was 50 years ago. Pretty much the same, minus health security.

tuatoru 4y ago
Where I live (NZ), 50 years ago they had apprenticeships. Behold the fruit of deregulation.
jimnotgym 4y ago
No...50 years ago we had the NHS, and sickness benefits, same as today My father and grandfather were both in the trade. 50 years ago there were some safety concerns, especially around scaffolding (asbestos too, but that's its own story). However they all lamented about how much easier it was to feed your family then.
- jimnotgym 4y ago
  Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom I’m old enough that one of my earliest memories of advice being given on house buying (not to me, I was still to young for that) was of people advising against buying anything from around the time you were praising (which at the time of the advice, wasn't brand new but still newish), making exactly the same comparison of that time to the time a few decades before (though I thing then it was usually 20-30 and not 50 years before held up as a model) as you make of now to then.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      I suspect they’re both correct. House building standards seem to have been trending downwards for at least 100 years if not more. Some things have gotten better of course (fire safety, insulation, etc), but the construction itself tends to be optimised for cost over quality these days.
      - maccard 4y ago
        Remember that there's a survivorshio bias in the 100 year old buildings you see still standing today. In many cases they are impractical for modern standards too - my home has 2ft thick external sandstone walls, and all the internal walls are brick. It's massively overengineered for the use of the building. At the same time there is nowhere to put any insulation on external walls meaning that during the winter were leaking huge amounts of heat and during the summer we live in an oven. Compare that to my friends modern new build in the same city (Edinburgh) their internal temperature is mostly stable. There's also things like "you can't run any extra cabling"- adding ethernet to my existing cabling isn't happening without replastering my entire home. And lets not start with modern 5GHz WiFi not passing through my internal walls. Needs have changed, materials are more consistent and easier to get, efficiency standards have changed. All of these things have had a huge impact on materials and costs. It's unfair to just say that buildings are built worse without considering anything else.
        nikita2206 4y ago
        In my experience I like living with stone walls a lot more than in a cardboard. It’s true though that doing any changes to the stone wall is a lot harder than with drywall, but it kind of proves the point that current construction techniques are optimized for cost (I like to say they optimized for the builder a lot more than for the ones living in that building). I think this is very much subjective in the end though. Also because current building techniques still make use of stone, bricks and concrete which all have the same downsides. But as you said they can be an overkill for some people who don’t mind the walls being quite soft for instance.
  - retcon 4y ago
    75 year ago in the race to rehouse the UK the government paid for new builds cost plus. My father wrote(and sold for broadcast) a eponymous radio play on the phenomenon of everyone adding five points to the BOM and labor and getting paid automatically by the Ministry of Works. It was D noted. Edit: My memory was wobbly the title was simply"Money". This (carte blanche for lousy work) created the next housing crisis that's created the currently forty years old UK housing crisis. My father ran the largest mortgage book of that era so saw the disaster up close and filthy.
donthellbanme 4y ago

Where I live (NZ), 50 years ago they had apprenticeships. Behold the fruit of deregulation.

No...50 years ago we had the NHS, and sickness benefits, same as today My father and grandfather were both in the trade. 50 years ago there were some safety concerns, especially around scaffolding (asbestos too, but that's its own story). However they all lamented about how much easier it was to feed your family then.

jimnotgym 4y ago
Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Also 50 years ago if you were building new housing, if your work was sub-standard you did not get paid. There would be a clerk of works checking it was up to scratch. Now it is a race to the bottom I’m old enough that one of my earliest memories of advice being given on house buying (not to me, I was still to young for that) was of people advising against buying anything from around the time you were praising (which at the time of the advice, wasn't brand new but still newish), making exactly the same comparison of that time to the time a few decades before (though I thing then it was usually 20-30 and not 50 years before held up as a model) as you make of now to then.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    I suspect they’re both correct. House building standards seem to have been trending downwards for at least 100 years if not more. Some things have gotten better of course (fire safety, insulation, etc), but the construction itself tends to be optimised for cost over quality these days.
    - maccard 4y ago
      Remember that there's a survivorshio bias in the 100 year old buildings you see still standing today. In many cases they are impractical for modern standards too - my home has 2ft thick external sandstone walls, and all the internal walls are brick. It's massively overengineered for the use of the building. At the same time there is nowhere to put any insulation on external walls meaning that during the winter were leaking huge amounts of heat and during the summer we live in an oven. Compare that to my friends modern new build in the same city (Edinburgh) their internal temperature is mostly stable. There's also things like "you can't run any extra cabling"- adding ethernet to my existing cabling isn't happening without replastering my entire home. And lets not start with modern 5GHz WiFi not passing through my internal walls. Needs have changed, materials are more consistent and easier to get, efficiency standards have changed. All of these things have had a huge impact on materials and costs. It's unfair to just say that buildings are built worse without considering anything else.
      - nikita2206 4y ago
        In my experience I like living with stone walls a lot more than in a cardboard. It’s true though that doing any changes to the stone wall is a lot harder than with drywall, but it kind of proves the point that current construction techniques are optimized for cost (I like to say they optimized for the builder a lot more than for the ones living in that building). I think this is very much subjective in the end though. Also because current building techniques still make use of stone, bricks and concrete which all have the same downsides. But as you said they can be an overkill for some people who don’t mind the walls being quite soft for instance.
- retcon 4y ago
  75 year ago in the race to rehouse the UK the government paid for new builds cost plus. My father wrote(and sold for broadcast) a eponymous radio play on the phenomenon of everyone adding five points to the BOM and labor and getting paid automatically by the Ministry of Works. It was D noted. Edit: My memory was wobbly the title was simply"Money". This (carte blanche for lousy work) created the next housing crisis that's created the currently forty years old UK housing crisis. My father ran the largest mortgage book of that era so saw the disaster up close and filthy.

donthellbanme 4y ago