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http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207 http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207 The city also began pressing for more codes to be met. Wee

http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207 http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207 The city also began pressing for more codes to be met. Weekly rattled off what appear to be significant costs: $150,000 to make three bathrooms compliant with the American Disabilities Act, $130,000 for fire sprinklers, and potentially thousands more in building permit fees and other improvements. "They want us to commit to a traffic study, build concrete walls around the dumpster and have the landlord re-slope the driveways," Weekly said. City staff said that it hasn't been determined whether the building has adequate exits and parking. City officials say code enforcement officers saw the Dojo advertising events online that would exceed the Dojo's 49- person occupancy limit for a building without fire sprinklers. As I said, it always starts with things optimized for optics like fire alarms (who could be against that?), but the moment you start digging you get the requirements for "traffic studies" and "concrete-enclosed dumpsters". ---- ORIGINAL POST: Well, I think we're at a basic philosophical impasse here. I'd argue that you probably have never dealt with the details of the regulatory process, and that if you did, you might feel differently; regulations are by their nature safety or security theater, optimized for optics. Most of the startups who've encountered specific regulations (Uber, AirBnB, Square, among them) tend to be much more skeptical of their wisdom than the public at large. But, even more deeply, we don't want to live in the same societies. You don't want to live in a place where crazy hackers can pack 50 people into an area zoned for 49, or have a building without a wheelchair-accessible bathroom. Stated in a less flip way, you don't want to be on the hook for the risks taken by others, and you want to force them to comply with certain cultural mores that you consider the basics of civilized society. By contrast, I don't want to live in a place where other people can impose irrational regulations without concern for practicality, cost, or consequences. I don't want to live in a place where other people aren't content with making their own places wheelchair-accessible, but want to impose their own ethical code on me as well, via fines and DOJ sweeps, among other mechanisms. Ultimately a lot of this boils down to population density and the extent to which someone can choose risk freely on their own. I'm very skeptical about the necessity of the ADA and cynical about the regulators enforcing the building permits process; you are not. I believe that government should be focused more on preventing actual crimes than doing sweeps for ADA violators; you may believe the lack of said accommodations to be discrimination, and therefore a reasonable priority for the federal government. So I think we'll have to just agree to disagree here.

kragen 14y ago
The other day I went past the República Cromañon on the bus. The street in front of it has finally been reopened. It's been closed ever since 196 music fans were burned to death because its operators thought the fire regulations were "safety theater", and chained shut the emergency exits. You can compare the death tolls from similar earthquakes in places that have effective earthquake building codes (like Chile) and places that don't (like Haïti). That's not "theater". That's hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, prevented. Fire used to be a major killer in the US, a century ago, far more than violent crime ever has been. People were routinely killed in panicked stampedes out of burning, or supposedly burning, theaters. Fire codes have reduced fire deaths to a tiny fraction of what they used to be. I don't think this is a "basic philosophical impasse". I think you're just not aware of the relevant facts. Maybe if you're aware of them and just choose to ignore them, that's sort of "philosophical", in the sense that you're being insufficiently philosophical, perhaps even misosophical. I strongly support my friends at Hacker Dojo who are undertaking the necessary improvements, and I encourage you to support them too, by donating money if possible.
- ramanujan 14y ago
  Well, as I said, it always starts with things like fire codes and then goes from there to spending tens of thousands on traffic studies. $15,000 for fire alarms might be ok. $150,000 for wheelchair accessible bathrooms is, in my view, overkill. They charge $100/month; that would mean at least 125 memberships just to pay for the bathrooms. But, just taking your specific example for a second, that actually seems to argue in favor of my point that these regulations are safety theater...because the Cromanon people received a permit! www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/americas/21briefs-7MEMBERSOFBA_BRF.html?_r=1 ...evidence showed that the club was given a permit although it lacked basic measures like fire extinguishers. A permit was issued, but the place wasn't safe. So that argues in favor of the concept that it was safety theater. Just like how the TSA doesn't actually protect against terrorism, it just tries to appear like it does. As for the next move, this is a Rorschach test. One response is to increase the stringency of the regulation, indirectly fining all other businesses for the Cromanon incident. An alternative response is to penalize the regulators involved, in the same way that Arthur Andersen paid a penalty for giving a thumbs up on Enron. The key difference is whether there is one government regulator or many distributed and competing reviewers. If there is only one regulator, the inevitable result of any terrible incident will be to monotonically ratchet up regulations on everyone, TSA style, with the only concern being PR and no heed for costs. Alternatively, if there is competition among reviewers, then that organically leads to an ongoing assessment of whether a particular rule is worth the costs or not.

kragen 14y ago

The other day I went past the República Cromañon on the bus. The street in front of it has finally been reopened. It's been closed ever since 196 music fans were burned to death because its operators thought the fire regulations were "safety theater", and chained shut the emergency exits. You can compare the death tolls from similar earthquakes in places that have effective earthquake building codes (like Chile) and places that don't (like Haïti). That's not "theater". That's hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, prevented. Fire used to be a major killer in the US, a century ago, far more than violent crime ever has been. People were routinely killed in panicked stampedes out of burning, or supposedly burning, theaters. Fire codes have reduced fire deaths to a tiny fraction of what they used to be. I don't think this is a "basic philosophical impasse". I think you're just not aware of the relevant facts. Maybe if you're aware of them and just choose to ignore them, that's sort of "philosophical", in the sense that you're being insufficiently philosophical, perhaps even misosophical. I strongly support my friends at Hacker Dojo who are undertaking the necessary improvements, and I encourage you to support them too, by donating money if possible.

ramanujan 14y ago
Well, as I said, it always starts with things like fire codes and then goes from there to spending tens of thousands on traffic studies. $15,000 for fire alarms might be ok. $150,000 for wheelchair accessible bathrooms is, in my view, overkill. They charge $100/month; that would mean at least 125 memberships just to pay for the bathrooms. But, just taking your specific example for a second, that actually seems to argue in favor of my point that these regulations are safety theater...because the Cromanon people received a permit! www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/world/americas/21briefs-7MEMBERSOFBA_BRF.html?_r=1 ...evidence showed that the club was given a permit although it lacked basic measures like fire extinguishers. A permit was issued, but the place wasn't safe. So that argues in favor of the concept that it was safety theater. Just like how the TSA doesn't actually protect against terrorism, it just tries to appear like it does. As for the next move, this is a Rorschach test. One response is to increase the stringency of the regulation, indirectly fining all other businesses for the Cromanon incident. An alternative response is to penalize the regulators involved, in the same way that Arthur Andersen paid a penalty for giving a thumbs up on Enron. The key difference is whether there is one government regulator or many distributed and competing reviewers. If there is only one regulator, the inevitable result of any terrible incident will be to monotonically ratchet up regulations on everyone, TSA style, with the only concern being PR and no heed for costs. Alternatively, if there is competition among reviewers, then that organically leads to an ongoing assessment of whether a particular rule is worth the costs or not.