Functionally, this is not true. Many buildings never get inspected at all. Or, if they do get inspected, it's by someone who wants to spend 1% of the time ther

Functionally, this is not true. Many buildings never get inspected at all. Or, if they do get inspected, it's by someone who wants to spend 1% of the time there compared to what they should be spending, so they just don't bother with doing most of their job. Or they're being paid by the builder to look the other way. Building codes are the sort of thing you worry about if you're not an actual home builder, and you think that the inspector is actually going to do their job. Most buildings never come within a mile of an actual engineer. Or architect. Now, if it's a high end home where they really want to make sure that they follow all the laws and regulations, they might actually hire an engineer and be able to figure out that they can safely do 24 OC studs in certain circumstances. But that's not even 1/10th of 1% of homes that are built.