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Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

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Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#91

Post by bellyfullofbac »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #76
dheera wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in healthcare. Doctors always shoo me away when I show warning signs. They're not interested in getting to the bottom of warning signs. They'd rather wait until shit happens before they're interested in taking my money and solving it. Oh and in a system where health insurance really cared about prevention, they'd pay for everyone's gym memberships.

Hah, nowadays there are mask mandates (more in Europe rather than in the Land of the Free). Makes me wonder what the world would be like with gym attendance mandates, or 10000 steps-a-day mandates.

Gotta love people downvoting a hypothetical/"what-if" because they think I'm advocating for a nanny state...

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#92

Post by mjcohen »

m463 wrote: post #38
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new midtown superthins are held up by reinforced concrete and are swaying in the breeze. They're going to be a liability once enough cracks develop.

I saw a really thin building in the opening credits of a movie. I found it was 432 Park Avenue. Wow, even thinner than a thin cigarette... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/432_Park_Avenue

That is a very entertaining read, especially the financing.

I would not want to live in a building like that. I am quite satisfied with our one-story 1500 square foot house.

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#93

Post by cudgy »

netsec_burn wrote: post #34
profmonocle wrote: post #32

I live in Minneapolis. Back in 2007 the I-35W bridge collapsed, killing 13 people. Engineers had previously reported that the bridge had structural problems. And once the collapse became national headlines news, bridges nationwide were given special attention. It shouldn't take horrific accidents for us to suddenly decide to care about structural safety.

Similarly, it shouldn't take a security breach for companies to care about security. Poor budgets are what is eliminating the safety nets.

A big problem with motivation to prevent security breaches is the lack of a significant penalty when they occur.

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#94

Post by fastaguy88 »

profmonocle wrote: post #32

I live in Minneapolis. Back in 2007 the I-35W bridge collapsed, killing 13 people. Engineers had previously reported that the bridge had structural problems. And once the collapse became national headlines news, bridges nationwide were given special attention. It shouldn't take horrific accidents for us to suddenly decide to care about structural safety.

But sometimes inspections work - the I40 bridge crack/shutdown in Memphis, for example (though apparently there are questions about why the problem was not discovered earlier).

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#95

Post by underwater »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #63
underwater wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a predictable failure mode of capitalism and free markets? Entities are disincentivised from preparing for rare and catastrophic events.

It's a predictable failure for human organizations in general, I'd say. There are plenty of instances where the government fucks up similarly, no profit motive required.

Generally government fuck ups are different though. Like creeping bureaucracy, corruption, failure to innovate, etc.

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#96

Post by underwater »

WalterBright wrote: post #54
underwater wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this a predictable failure mode of capitalism and free markets? Entities are disincentivised from preparing for rare and catastrophic events.

No. The building was communally owned by its residents, and they squabbled for years about allocating money for the repairs. All economic systems begin and end with the lament "if only we had more money, we could do it right."

I think a free market tends to work better with predictable events, transparency, and large market sizes. None of those applied in this case.

In this case the negative event was a black swan event. The board and residents were required to correctly understand the risk of failure to remediate problems in this specific building. Who does an in-depth analysis of risk of building failure when renting or buying a property? Not a single person correctly identified that a collapse was imminent.

The other problem with rare events is that you can ignore them most of the time and not suffer any consequences. If there is a one in a thousand chance of something bad happening, and addressing that risk will cost you your job, or money, or your reputation then 99.9% of the time you incur that cost unnecessarily. That means that an entity that addresses risk becomes less competitive than a (lucky) company who doesn't.

If you increase the market size, then a lot of these complaints go away. Assessing risk of collapse across a hundred thousand buildings, like an insurance company might do, is much easier. If buildings were maintained by corporations that controlled many properties, people could avoid companies with poor track records.

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#97

Post by kortilla »

yomly wrote: post #71
dheera wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine that due to simple laws of increasing entropy, any structure will eventually collapse, it's just a question of when, not if. What do people normally do to check if a building is facing a possibility of collapse in the near future? I don't think I've seen anyone poking around at most buildings I've occupied before to check for structural integrity.

While over any time frame a building will eventually collapse it's worth recalling that in europe many of the buildings are substantially older than those in the US. I foresee collapsing buildings becoming more and more of an issue for fast erected buildings from the past 50 or so years Slightly an aside but I believe that is part of the reason why leases in Singapore are often 99 years - because the government doesn…

> it's worth recalling that in europe many of the buildings are substantially older than those in the US.

Not anything this tall. Mid to high rises weren’t really possible until very recently historically speaking.

Also don’t forget that you’re literally hitting survivor bias here. Of course the old buildings still standing in Europe are the good construction, all of the others are gone.

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#98

Post by kortilla »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #64
megablast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want to pay higher taxes? You are in the minority.

Actually, I want the people that make more than me to pay their fair share. That alone would pay for pretty much everything the U.S. needs.

And by “fair share” you mean even proportionally more of their income than yours. Because aside from some people living purely off of cap gains, the doctors/lawyers/engineers/small business owners already pay more absolute values and more percentage values than the lower and middle class.

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#99

Post by annamargot »

MattGaiser wrote: post #78
nickff wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with paying for gym memberships is that the marginal gym member won’t actually attend.

I would be interested in that question. Would free gym actually change the amount of exercise being done? I suspect not.

My bet is that it would decrease the amount done.

If it’s free why not sign up, maybe someday I’ll use it. Maybe not

Edit: decrease the amount done as a percentage of signups. Perhaps the growth in signups would make up for the percentage drop in aggregate terms. Ie flood the gym with memberships and only find one more person actually working out

Re: Miami orders evacuation of 156-unit as structurally and electrically unsafe

#100

Post by squeaky-clean »

meepmorp wrote: post #81
squeaky-clean wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert at this, but I did grow up in Florida. I'm pretty certain the bedrock is limestone. It's a Karst landscape.

Below the limestone karst, there's a solid bedrock structure that extends out into gulf - the Florida Platform.

The Florida Platform is composed of carbonate rocks up to a depth of like 6km.
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