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

crainsnewyork.com

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

#141

Post by BinaryIdiot »

bobwaycott wrote: post #109
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did we read the same article? You excluded what the current crane operator union was doing to prevent this thing from being used which seemed like the meat of the article to me.

There's no evidence of the union activity to prevent this crane from being used. There's an awful lot of unsubstantiated leading the reader to conclude this. There is a very strong anti-union bias throughout the article, with zero support for the allegations and finger-pointing. But it's well done, because you're really blaming the union by the end, even though there's no proof.

> because you're really blaming the union by the end, even though there's no proof.

I did no such thing. A `TL;DR` is typically a summation of an article. The primary narrative in the article was the union stifling this businessman. Whether it's true or not doesn't really effect a summary of the content itself.

To openly state a summary without including the primary narrative of the article seems disingenuous to the article you're summarizing, in my opinion.

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

#142

Post by TillE »

rsync wrote: post #114

"In April 2014, City Councilman Ben Kallos, who received $2,500 over two elections from Local 14, introduced new legislation to prohibit climber cranes like the Skypicker from being classified as mobile cranes. The rule would treat the Skypicker like a tower crane, requiring it to carry more insurance and have a Class A operator." Wow. So, for the price of a laptop I could influence NYC politics and have a councilman…

It is amazing what cheap dates politicians generally are, even at the national level. The largest numbers you see (eg, pharma industry) are in the low millions.

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

#143

Post by T-hawk »

astrodust wrote: post #68
Houshalter wrote: post #38

The first subway in New York City cost about $100 million per kilometer in 1900 (adjusted for inflation of course). The new subway line being opened this year cost $2.2 billion per kilometer. This is despite over a century of improvements in technology. Here's an interesting HN post, "Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11736696 In that article is…

We're still fascinated by the properties of Roman concrete which has, in many cases, survived 2000 years mostly unscathed. Meanwhile brutalist buildings from the 1950s are crumbling.

Careful of survivorship bias here. Of course we don't see any Roman buildings that crumbled 50 years after construction.

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

#144

Post by cperciva »

djrogers wrote: post #90
jandrese wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently the regulators thought it was mounted on a truck, but when they went in person to inspect it they discovered that he had built some sort of jury rigged contraption to move it around instead. This made it fall outside of their definition of a mobile crane. The article insinuates that the union was behind it all, but I'm not convinced he didn't just piss off the regulators in this case.

That version of events turns out to be inaccurate: -- Delia Shumway, a professional engineer and the executive director of the agency’s Cranes and Derricks Unit when the Skypicker was approved, emailed me that Chandler confused the Skypicker revocation with a ruling about an entirely different crane. Shumway wrote, “He’s the one that’s misinformed. The piece of equipment that he’s referring to was not the Skypicker b…

That link has the best quote I've seen in ages: "We know that building construction requires a great deal of fabrication..."

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

#145

Post by gervase »

rsync wrote: post #114

"In April 2014, City Councilman Ben Kallos, who received $2,500 over two elections from Local 14, introduced new legislation to prohibit climber cranes like the Skypicker from being classified as mobile cranes. The rule would treat the Skypicker like a tower crane, requiring it to carry more insurance and have a Class A operator." Wow. So, for the price of a laptop I could influence NYC politics and have a councilman…

Honestly, I don't think most people realize just how cheaply politicians can be "influenced" compared to the effect they can have. I mean, $2,500 for a local politician seems cheap to us, but to a corporation making billions a year, $250,000 per year for a congressperson is a similar bargain. In this case, that small $2,500 donation was enough of a foot in the door to (allegedly) create hundreds of thousands or millions of extra dollars per year in revenue; where else can you get that kind of ROI?

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

#146

Post by notgood »

manicdee wrote: post #123
unethical_ban wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that unions are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.

s/unions/humans/g A few unions engage in poor practices and you are happy to tar them all with the same brush. The problem is not the unions.

Saying "the problem is not the unions" is as wide-brush as saying they are the problem; unions have some good causes but the core of their existence is to keep employees employed, sometimes that means important jobs that should exist and sometimes its a cancer that stops a business from profiting or stopping the creation of new ones or the advance of technology (think taxi drivers vs self-driving cars)

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

#147

Post by abandonliberty »

atom-morgan wrote: post #22
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.

And when people advocate for programmers unionizing, I don't see why we'd be any different. There'd be people employed doing X, a programmer would make something to automate X, and "our" union would be trying to save their job.

Call it a 'professional association', like doctors, lawyers, and engineers.

The real problem is wealth concentration. Unions and professional associations are one way for the working class to push back when the society they live in is failing to do so.

It's the wrong tool, not addressing the root cause, has implementation challenges, and will create problems in the future.

But the ship is sinking right now. Since the 1970s.

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

#148

Post by bobwaycott »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #141
bobwaycott wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no evidence of the union activity to prevent this crane from being used. There's an awful lot of unsubstantiated leading the reader to conclude this. There is a very strong anti-union bias throughout the article, with zero support for the allegations and finger-pointing. But it's well done, because you're really blaming the union by the end, even though there's no proof.

> because you're really blaming the union by the end, even though there's no proof. I did no such thing. A `TL;DR` is typically a summation of an article. The primary narrative in the article was the union stifling this businessman. Whether it's true or not doesn't really effect a summary of the content itself. To openly state a summary without including the primary narrative of the article seems disingenuous to the…

I meant "you're" in the universal sense as a reader.

In my opinion, a tl;dr that glosses over pointing out the unsubstantiated crux of an article's narrative is a major disservice. It's fine to sum up the narrative. It's just as disingenuous to fail to point out the narrative lacks evidentiary support whatsoever.

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

#149

Post by schoen »

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #128
djrogers wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good find - the video of the crane 'vertically relocating' itself is pretty amazing.

Holy crap, yes, that video should be the center piece here. That's an absolutely amazing idea.

It looks like that feature is also part of what the regulators were concerned about the safety of (in terms of how firmly it manages to attach to the building levels).

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

#150

Post by pinot »

Houshalter wrote: post #38

The first subway in New York City cost about $100 million per kilometer in 1900 (adjusted for inflation of course). The new subway line being opened this year cost $2.2 billion per kilometer. This is despite over a century of improvements in technology. Here's an interesting HN post, "Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11736696 In that article is…

A tunnel built in 1900 looks nothing like a tunnel built in 2017. Strength, longevity, safety systems, dimensions, computer controls, power etc etc are all massively upgraded. It's not a fair comparison.

That's like saying this electric car [1] from the 1902 would be far cheaper to build than a Telsa in 2017, therefore Teslas are over priced.

[1] http://www.intechopen.com/source/html/41483/media/f4.jpg

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