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While I don't like the language you chose, and the way it presents your reply as snide, I'll ablige. I addressed that already. "The increase in number and spec

While I don't like the language you chose, and the way it presents your reply as snide, I'll ablige. I addressed that already. "The increase in number and specificity of building codes has come in-part due to foreign-made building materials and poor QC." Quality Control from foreign made building materials was far less than those components manufactured in the U.S. at the time. I grew up in a pipefititng and piping wholesale family, which is closely adjacent to steel manufacturing. You're welcome to dive in if you're genuinely curious, there's tons of reading material available. I'd recommend starting with the decline in fitting production and consolidation in the U.S. in the 90s with the introduction of Korean-made fittings. Chinese-made cast iron is another one to poke at. Starting in the 70s, Chinese-made cast iron was widely imported and was used widely in underground piping, namely sewer and sanitary. Cast iron failure was a huge problem for 20 years. If you're looking for a xenophobe angle to argue, it's simply not there.

jameshart 3y ago
You don’t mean ‘foreign made’, you mean ‘cheaply imported’. Your complaints aren’t directed at Swedish steel or German fittings. They’re directed to Asian sourced parts imported by American companies. The regulatory context that permitted self assembly of houses seems wholly orthogonal to parts supply chains for professional manufacture.
- fosk 3y ago
  Yes you are correct, but they are foreign made because they are cheaply imported in the first place. Otherwise they would be both made and purchased in the US.
- DiggyJohnson 3y ago
  You are restating the obvious point of the original statement, just with the addition of trying to pillory the GP for not choosing to make the obvious point in as many words as you’d prefer…?
  - jameshart 3y ago
    The post said that one of the reasons Sears houses could exist then, but can’t now, was > The increase in number and specificity of building codes has come in-part due to foreign-made building materials and poor QC. And clarified specifically: > the decline in fitting production and consolidation in the U.S. in the 90s with the introduction of Korean-made fittings. Chinese-made cast iron is another one to poke at. I’m not pillorying anyone, I’m just trying to get them to join some dots up. Why is the location of fitting manufacture relevant to the decline of the Sears house? Doesn’t the availability of cheaper parts manufactured to apparently lower quality standards make it easier for catalogue houses to exist? And didn’t the Sears house decline long before the Chinese cast iron of the 70s and these Korean fittings of the 90s? Did building regulations make it harder to offer kit houses? Yet building regulations did not prevent cheap imported parts coming in to the US apparently, so… building refs both were a reaction to foreign parts but also a cause of a decline in US part manufacturing?
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      Building codes do vary from locale to locale, and constantly change, which would make it a nuisance to develop a standard design. Another problem is home designs are adapted to their locations. That doesn't work so well with a cookie cutter design.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > You don’t mean ‘foreign made’, you mean ‘cheaply imported’. The price of them being imported does not have the same meaning to me that I think you want it to have. Why are we pussy footing around this? Shit is just made with less quality than it was "back in the day". Even shit made in the USofA is of lower quality than it used to be, so it's not just something "foreign made". Why? Because consumers did not want to pay for quality. Making it right is expensive. Good quality assurance is expensive. Manufactures trying to get ahead decided to start cutting costs and lowering quality and lowering QA standards, and consumers bought that shit up left, right, and center. People decided they preferred to have cheap things now, and if it breaks and it's still cheap, then just replace cheap with cheap. This is not any different than companies looking for short term profits to make stockholders happy rather than what's better for long term results for the stockholders or the company itself. So, it's not just a thing evident in manufacturing but in all business. We (the royal we) have lost long term vision in pretty much all aspects
  - willdr 3y ago
    Consumers didn't want to pay for quality to the extent demanded by corporations that need to grow YOY. Companies were placed into a cost-cutting race to the bottom. Everything continually gets worse, until we no longer remember how it was better.
    - nerdponx 3y ago
      Making things worse while hiding that it's gotten worse is just corporate strategy, and corporations have every incentive to attempt to do it all the time.
      - chiefalchemist 3y ago
        As do politicians, and their sidekicks, the media. And the three together do a world-class job pushing a narrative that somehow never mentions worse.
        nerdponx 3y ago
- xattt 3y ago
  Did countries from which cheap imports originated also happen to have a stream of higher quality components for domestic/indigenous use?

jameshart 3y ago

You don’t mean ‘foreign made’, you mean ‘cheaply imported’. Your complaints aren’t directed at Swedish steel or German fittings. They’re directed to Asian sourced parts imported by American companies. The regulatory context that permitted self assembly of houses seems wholly orthogonal to parts supply chains for professional manufacture.

fosk 3y ago
Yes you are correct, but they are foreign made because they are cheaply imported in the first place. Otherwise they would be both made and purchased in the US.
DiggyJohnson 3y ago
You are restating the obvious point of the original statement, just with the addition of trying to pillory the GP for not choosing to make the obvious point in as many words as you’d prefer…?
- jameshart 3y ago
  The post said that one of the reasons Sears houses could exist then, but can’t now, was > The increase in number and specificity of building codes has come in-part due to foreign-made building materials and poor QC. And clarified specifically: > the decline in fitting production and consolidation in the U.S. in the 90s with the introduction of Korean-made fittings. Chinese-made cast iron is another one to poke at. I’m not pillorying anyone, I’m just trying to get them to join some dots up. Why is the location of fitting manufacture relevant to the decline of the Sears house? Doesn’t the availability of cheaper parts manufactured to apparently lower quality standards make it easier for catalogue houses to exist? And didn’t the Sears house decline long before the Chinese cast iron of the 70s and these Korean fittings of the 90s? Did building regulations make it harder to offer kit houses? Yet building regulations did not prevent cheap imported parts coming in to the US apparently, so… building refs both were a reaction to foreign parts but also a cause of a decline in US part manufacturing?
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    Building codes do vary from locale to locale, and constantly change, which would make it a nuisance to develop a standard design. Another problem is home designs are adapted to their locations. That doesn't work so well with a cookie cutter design.
dylan604 3y ago
> You don’t mean ‘foreign made’, you mean ‘cheaply imported’. The price of them being imported does not have the same meaning to me that I think you want it to have. Why are we pussy footing around this? Shit is just made with less quality than it was "back in the day". Even shit made in the USofA is of lower quality than it used to be, so it's not just something "foreign made". Why? Because consumers did not want to pay for quality. Making it right is expensive. Good quality assurance is expensive. Manufactures trying to get ahead decided to start cutting costs and lowering quality and lowering QA standards, and consumers bought that shit up left, right, and center. People decided they preferred to have cheap things now, and if it breaks and it's still cheap, then just replace cheap with cheap. This is not any different than companies looking for short term profits to make stockholders happy rather than what's better for long term results for the stockholders or the company itself. So, it's not just a thing evident in manufacturing but in all business. We (the royal we) have lost long term vision in pretty much all aspects
- willdr 3y ago
  Consumers didn't want to pay for quality to the extent demanded by corporations that need to grow YOY. Companies were placed into a cost-cutting race to the bottom. Everything continually gets worse, until we no longer remember how it was better.
  - nerdponx 3y ago
    Making things worse while hiding that it's gotten worse is just corporate strategy, and corporations have every incentive to attempt to do it all the time.
    - chiefalchemist 3y ago
      As do politicians, and their sidekicks, the media. And the three together do a world-class job pushing a narrative that somehow never mentions worse.
      - nerdponx 3y ago
xattt 3y ago
Did countries from which cheap imports originated also happen to have a stream of higher quality components for domestic/indigenous use?