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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)

#201

Post by clarkmoody »

pinot wrote: post #150
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

Yes, but he's noting that a century of technological advancement has not been able to keep the costs to less than a 22x increase. It must be something other than the technology.

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

#202

Post by clarkmoody »

nkrisc wrote: post #15

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

Unions themselves are not the problem. It's the union-government partnership that prevents the market from operating properly.

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

#203

Post by jaza »

gingerbread-man wrote: post #76
atom-morgan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Just throwing in another reason why programmer unions don't make a lot of sense: licensing. It makes sense to license electricians, crane operators, doctors, lawyers, and many other professions who do safety-critical work. Only a very small minority of programmers work on software that could actually hurt someone (at Boeing, Toyota, etc...). There's no reason to create a legal barrier to entry for programming.

There is no general licence for a "construction worker". There are specific licences for things like "tower crane operator", "intermediate rigger", "advanced scaffolding erector".

Similarly, there would never be a general licence for "programmer". But some day there probably will be (and indeed probably should be) specific licences for things like "have back-end access to personal medical data", "modify source code of nuclear reactor control software", and "install networking hardware via which credit card details are transmitted".

It's not about creating a barrier to entry for a whole profession. It's about licencing people to work in specific situations where there are specific risks, such as privacy risks, public safety risks, and risk of fraud.

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

#204

Post by Retra »

viraptor wrote: post #200
Retra wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad decisions are bad because they are harmful. And most stupid things you do to yourself do affect others, and they are regulated according to the significance of the damage, not merely predicated on its existence.

I specifically qualified with not affecting others, because otherwise that would be a different discussion. Yet...

Yet we still find some reason to regulate just about everything, because people are pretty creative about finding ways to pass the consequences of their bad decisions onto other people.

I don't know real estate developers to be any sort of exception, do you?

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

#205

Post by rtpg »

fiter wrote: post #179
paulmd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do this in lots of places. For example, it's against building code in most places to build a house without power grid feeds, running water, or septic/sewer access. Sometimes there are exceptions for "tiny houses" but other times not. You yourself might want to go totally off the grid and/or rustic, but the reality is that you are likely not going to be the last person who ever lives in that house. Maybe you don't…

I suppose I didn't make it explicit, but my point is that these regulations can be costly and/or stifling for a future benefit that may never come. Costly in the original example would be that waterless urinals are installed for the life of the building. Stifling in your example would be because much land will never be used because it's infeasible to bring power, water, and septic. Someone could have a home, but noth…

There aren't that many building regulations in the middle of the countryside.

Building busted stuff in the middle of NYC hurts everyone, because there's limited space.

Visionaries can build where other people don't want to be, or convince the people around them that what they want to do is a good idea.

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

#206

Post by Bendingo »

arjie wrote: post #126
linkregister wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is expecting a $150k wage floor? Edit: the union mentioned in the article. (I hadn't read it). It appears you're generalizing this union to represent other unions. It's possible for one union to be exploitative while other ones to have merit. Just as some corporations behave responsibly while a few others blatantly disregard consumers and workers.

> The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 14-14B lays out the wage floor for its operators at $73.91 per hour. That’s $150,000 a year before overtime, plus benefits equal to $32.50 an hour. When the operator is behind the controls of a tower crane, he gets a $2-an-hour bump. On weekends, when cranes are moved, pay doubles. With overtime, many union members earn half a million dollars a year. The union in…

Assuming hourly rate of: 73.91 (wage floor) + 32.50 (benefits) + 2 (bump) = 108.41 And a 40 hour standard week: 108.41 x 40 = 4336 (weekly rate), 4336 x 52 = 225492 (yearly rate) Assuming double weekend rate, for 8 hours on both sat/sun: 108.41 x 2 = 218.82 (weekend hourly rate), 218,41 x 8 x 2 = 3469.1 (weekend rate, 3469 x 52 = 180394 (yearly rate)

Therefore working 8 hours a day, for every day of the week (including weekends), for one year would earn: 225492 + 180394 = 405886

This is very big money but it's not 'half a million dollars'.

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

#207

Post by davidgay »

CPLX wrote: post #116
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.

Consider that [investors|police|politicians|priests|religions|banks|unions|wives|airport taxis|pets|corporations|executives] are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.

I just have to ask about the corrupt pets... So?

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

#208

Post by CPLX »

davidgay wrote: post #207
CPLX wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that [investors|police|politicians|priests|religions|banks|unions|wives|airport taxis|pets|corporations|executives] are great in theory and in many circumstances have proven themselves corrupt to the core in practice.

I just have to ask about the corrupt pets... So?

I think everyone knows which pets I'm talking about.

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

#209

Post by aaron695 »

fiter wrote: post #34
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…

I think it's very important to be able to let people make these decisions. It's inefficient to add a water line if it's never going to be used. You might believe I'm going to use it, but I might know I'm not going to use it. Maybe you're right, but I am the one paying the bill to tear off finishings to run water lines in the walls.

Do you think it should be code that toilets have to be installed? You could shit in a box?

Personally this is not tooooo far off that. Ensuring toilets always work.

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

#210

Post by maxmcd »

mypalmike wrote: post #72
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 big difference in subway costs is that subways used to be built by closing roadways and digging from above ("cut and cover"). But now it's almost always done by very slow, very expensive to operate underground boring machines.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/1/1/14112776/new...

NYC subway construction costs exceed costs of similar projects in different countries, by quite a bit.

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