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Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

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Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#91

Post by Retra »

djrogers wrote: post #79
RangerScience wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiiiinnnnda. People make bad decisions, and the only architecture that matters is the one that lets you change. It's like the dig-once fiber policy for roadways, and is all part of the "don't build to peak value" idea; it's also like a usual problem with user interface design: if you only ever built user tools to do what you imagined, users (or later owners / tenants) are limited to your imagination. I go to a gym in…

> Kiiiinnnnda. People make bad decisions You can't outlaw bad decisions - but it seems that some people will never get tired of trying...

You can outlaw bad decisions. That's the whole point of laws.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#92

Post by Retra »

djrogers wrote: post #80
VLM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

waterless ones are patented and without a water line you'd be locked in to higher priced products and/or have to spend a lot of extra money to run a new water line after the walls go up. Generally the situation with waterless ones is people endlessly social signal their green superiority about them, then the incredible stench makes them install real urinals. Even if only 5% or so install real urinals the net cost is…

What about the flip side of it - someone wants to put in a few waterless urinals someplace where they can't run water line, and the alternative is no urinals at all? You've literally outlawed a portion of the utility of the invention.

A pipe that runs to a waterless urinal doesn't actually waste any water.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#93

Post by CPLX »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #77
thekevan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and required fewer operator man hours, his job sites were picketed by unions. There were anonymous calls to 311 reporting violations but when the inspectors got there, they didn't find anything wrong. In my mind, I'm skeptical and it could have been the cranes or i…

It's the unions. On my way to work, I pass by a giant inflatable rat inflated by a gas motor that's hauled around by a truck. It's rather annoying when its tail gets loose and covers the sidewalk, as can happen on windy days when it's not tied down appropriately. It's probably 10 or 12 feet tall, at least, and the tail is maybe 12 feet long or longer. (3 feet is about one meter for those in metric land). It's parked…

Though it's possible that you're correct on this specific issue, you've offered absolutely no support for your argument.

Consider the possibility that the strong streak of instinctive union bashing that you see in typical professional class culture in the U.S. is very much the creation of decades of aggressive PR effort by those who consider unions threatening.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#94

Post by djrogers »

zyztem wrote: post #10

How operation of this machine is different from pretty standard small derrick cranes? Like Liebherr DR? Or even spider cranes (Maeda & others)?

The Liebherr you reference is a dismantling crane, so obvious difference in usage there, and spiders/mini crawler are mobile cranes.

The Skypicker is bolted to the floor of the building, and when the next level is ready to go in, it hauls itself up to the height of the next floor through a hole, which is then finished around the crane, which is once again bolted to the floor. The last 30 seconds of the video on this page show how it relocates: http://vertikalsolutions.net/products/

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#95

Post by libdong »

> Mooney was told his crane didn’t have to go through the long approval process required for newly designed large cranes and that it could be approved as a mobile crane.

There has to be some kind of miscommunication going on here. By what definition is his crane mobile? Because it's easier to disassemble and load on to a truck than a tower crane? While the DoB's classifications for cranes seems arbitrary, I can't say I blame them for not considering it mobile.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#96

Post by Retra »

turc1656 wrote: post #65
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course! Unions are a way to balance the scales against corporations. Controlling the supply of labor is very important if you want the wages to be at all decent. But the parent is right that anything questionable done by unions is labored over and repeated again and again and again and again while corporations (for the most part) don't face the same scrutiny.

I agree corporations get off far too easy. And that is the fault of the government in many cases for not prosecuting them or letting them off with fines far below the profits of illegal activity. "Controlling the supply of labor is very important if you want the wages to be at all decent." - I interpret that sentence very differently. I see it as controlling the labor supply is a great way to prevent the flow of labo…

If a company couldn't "collectively bargain", it wouldn't even exist. Companies are not collections of individuals bargaining for themselves.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#97

Post by Shivetya »

Zach_the_Lizard wrote: post #77
thekevan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but remember this is New York City. In the original article, when the crane was first used on jobs and word got around about it being less expensive and required fewer operator man hours, his job sites were picketed by unions. There were anonymous calls to 311 reporting violations but when the inspectors got there, they didn't find anything wrong. In my mind, I'm skeptical and it could have been the cranes or i…

It's the unions. On my way to work, I pass by a giant inflatable rat inflated by a gas motor that's hauled around by a truck. It's rather annoying when its tail gets loose and covers the sidewalk, as can happen on windy days when it's not tied down appropriately. It's probably 10 or 12 feet tall, at least, and the tail is maybe 12 feet long or longer. (3 feet is about one meter for those in metric land). It's parked…

this is not confined to NYC or cities.

My cousins have run a successful commercial roofing business in a Mid Western state for decades. It is common that on any public building they work on to have an OSHA inspector come out on day if not each day, to have a local sheriff be called, and even once INS. All because this family owned business is non union and has always been. the sad part, this is a business which has never had more than two dozen employees.

It isn't just them. If non union electricians are on site for isolating air conditioning systems if not building main power they too are subject to the same.

The joke is, that for much of the state they know every OSHA inspector and even the inspectors joke about it. Still they have to stop work and dance the dance. and this is only for the legal means to intimidate.

unions aren't just about protecting employees, they are big money for both those who run them and the politicians they support.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#98

Post by ThomPete »

nkrisc wrote: post #15

Unions have a purpose. Suppressing innovation and competition to protect their gravy train monopoly should not be one of them.

Not all unions are bad.

Unions serve a purpose in many industries but today a lot of them are antiquated echoes from the past.

Uber drivers should have a union IMO, but the ATeachers Union and Manhattan construction industry should have theirs disrupted by something more fitting for the new reality they have too much power. The construction industry literally have people holdning signal flags the entire day.

Furthermore when it comes to Manhattan lets not forget how much wiseguys control many of the cities industries.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#99

Post by crusso »

wfo wrote: post #46
jakelarkin wrote: post #7

This is sort of like how when the waterless urinal was first commercialized, the plumbers union blocked it from getting approved in the general building code. Eventually a compromised was reached that involves requiring a plumber to draw an water line (unutilized) to every water-less install. Unions for skilled, high-pay jobs in highly regulated industries really extract a lot of questionable value from society.

Well, that's exactly the point. Just as corporations extract questionable value from society on behalf of their owning structure, unions extract questionable value from society on behalf of the workers. They are a similar-in-kind counterweight to corporate power, so it stands to reason they do similar things. As it turns out in capitalism "extracting questionable value from society and taking it for yourself" is real…

But where corporate power with labor is scoped to each specific corporation, union power often crosses to many corporations, often even crossing to different industries. Many industries have needlessly suffered and died at the hands of overpowered unions.

Capitalism rarely extracts questionable value from society, and when it does it's normally the result of government interference in an industry in order to advantage one business vs another - creating non-value-based power imbalances like monopolies.

To the contrary, Capitalism has been proven time and again to provide maximum value for society.

Re: Why is this little construction crane illegal in New York City? (2016)

#100

Post by [deleted] »

jakelarkin wrote: post #7

This is sort of like how when the waterless urinal was first commercialized, the plumbers union blocked it from getting approved in the general building code. Eventually a compromised was reached that involves requiring a plumber to draw an water line (unutilized) to every water-less install. Unions for skilled, high-pay jobs in highly regulated industries really extract a lot of questionable value from society.

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