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Comment by drhayes9 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know how I feel about this issue. Haven't decided.

But if my neighbor miswires a light switch and it starts a fire that burns my house down because they're close together, that would suck. In that situation, I would have wanted a say in whether my neighbor chose to do that themselves or hire someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm living in a house that is filled with small jobs that seemed like they were done by someone who didn't know what they were doing. Lots of scrap lumber, mis-matching parts, electrical re-wires that just didn't work, etc. I'm glad I don't need a permit to fix some of that myself, but I would've loved to stop this guy before he did these things.

Or if someone's half-assery endangered otherwise innocent lives. Note: not necessarily crying "save the children!" "Innocent" as in "couldn't influence decision to get someone who knows what they're doing".

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What if your neighbour puts a large pot of oil on the stove and drops some water in the boiling oil and the whole thing catches on fire (and the house burns down and your house is near)? Or candles? Or cigarettes in bed?

I don't have numbers, but I would be fairly confident in a guess that many, many more houses burn down because of a combination of open flames and carelessness, than do because of low-level DIY electrical work.

Carelessness and open flames are in many ways unavoidable. Badly wired light switches are avoidable.

Why not just simply require people to sit through a fire safety class and issue them a fire safely license, which would be required for purchasing candles, matches or lighters? And to have an extended "cooking with gas fire safety" class as a requirement for having utility gas in your home?

Because we can choose to draw the line somewhere, however arbitrary it might be.

Using matches to light a stove or fireplace is so common that we've as a society decided to not place restrictions on that activity because the cost outweighs the benefit.

However, doing electrical work on your house is not quite as common and the result of your work will stay with the house and possibly affect future owners. Added to that the work is generally hidden or not obvious and future owners may not know about your substandard work.

Yeah it's a totally arbitrary line, but either we license nothing or we just pick somewhere to draw it.

> we license nothing or we just pick somewhere to draw it

My original comment was because in the UK most of this stuff isn't licensed* - even installing a gas stove doesn't need a license, which I'd argue is a lot easier to screw up than a light switch.

There are 'regulations' on how things should be done, but these are merely guidelines in most cases - you won't have any issues with the authorities when trying to sell your house or with insurers if it's not up to scratch. It would be interesting to see how accidents caused by this compare in the UK and US.

On the other hand two things we do strictly regulate are 'listed' buildings and the removal of trees in your garden.

*I think the same is true for most of Europe.

In many places this is (or used to be) part of a high school diploma. My elementary school had assemblies where firefighters would come talk to us about fire safety. My middle school had a Home Economics class where they talked about grease fires and using burners correctly.

Why? This is clearly a greater danger. Obviously, people should be required to get a license before using a stove. Everyone else will be allowed to buy precooked food ($profit$!) and put it in an approved microwave.

That's true, by about 10:1. Are you saying that we shouldn't bother licensing electricians or getting permits for electrical work because people are burning down houses in fires? It feels like you're presenting this as some kind of refutation to a point I'm not making?

EDIT: What's the emoji for "my tone is sincere, I'm misunderstanding what he's saying you downvoting heathens?" ( =

I'm saying we should stop pretending the reason you can't do light DIY electrical work in your home has anything to do whatsoever with public safety.

By and large in the US, you can as far as the government is concerned--especially if the scope is such that a permit doesn't need to be pulled and the work inspected. (There may be exceptions in some states, but it hasn't been the case in my experience either as a matter of law or as a practical matter.)

> But if my neighbor miswires a light switch and it starts a fire that burns my house down because they're close together, that would suck. In that situation, I would have wanted a say in whether my neighbor chose to do that themselves or hire someone who knows what they're doing.

I'm more or less in the same boat, but leaning towards "not licensing."

Here's how I look at it: in your scenario, would licensing have really prevented any of that from happening? It might give us grounds to sue for damages, but I don't think it would deter idiots from doing what idiots are going to do. Seems more likely to hinder conscious people who can be bothered to look up "the right way" to do something in the first place.

In industrial cases though I absolutely see the need for licensing where safety is concerned - I don't want an untrained person working on the aircraft that's about to transport me across 3000 miles of land mass.

The distinction I would make is a matter of scale and significance I suppose.

That's a good point about the idiots. A lot of this discussion feels similar to discussions around developer toolchains as a safeguard against bad code, in a way. Like, we're all well-meaning people who want to do something about this but maybe making people ask permission isn't the solution?

Scale feels like a good metric for this. Like, if you're a builder making a lot of houses get a permit. If you're a homeowner fixing your own stuff, you're okay. Maybe education? Like, "You're buying a house! Have a free handyman course on us!" or something?

> Scale feels like a good metric for this. Like, if you're a builder making a lot of houses get a permit. If you're a homeowner fixing your own stuff, you're okay. Maybe education? Like, "You're buying a house! Have a free handyman course on us!" or something?

Yep, that seems like a reasonable compromise to me.

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