Japan's Strict Building Codes Saved Lives
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
If so, yes I suppose that could be true. Fewer people would die in traffic accidents if we had a stoplight on every corner, we had to drive Sherman Tanks, and the speed limit was 20MPH. The problem is we'd be way less productive and we'd be much poorer.
If China had Japan's strict building codes from 1980 to present, China's economic growth would have been far slower, but in an earthquake, more people may die in China. Is that a good thing or bad thing? Over the last 20 years, strong economic growth in China has likely saved far more lives than strict building codes may have saved. But that is too complex to get into here.
Also note Japan's poor economic growth during over the last 10-20 years.
Are some people in Japan better off because of strict building codes? Yes, no doubt. Is everyone in Japan better off due to strict building code? much harder to say.
The article's sole goal seems to be to help explain how a country with a large history of Earthquake experience has learned from it's history, and how the lessons and how they applied to their building structure helps explain how they might be able to deal with an 8.9 magnitude earthquake much better and with greater loss of life than if this earthquake had struck somewhere else.
I don't think there is a secret meaning in every New York Times article.
You see what you want to see, even when it's not there. It's not very objective to assume there's a political agenda behind everything.
I find this story interesting both on an engineering level and as something news-worthy to explain how Japan may have been able to avoid a far greater tragedy.
I don't really buy the "safety is cost prohibitive" argument much. Modern societies have no problem absorbing the cost. Not to mention the cost of post-earthquake cleanup is less.
Unfortunately, its popular now in the USA to dismiss public safety as being less important than profits and to praise horribly unsafe countries run by dictators for their "growth." Not to mention, the intangibles here with the libertarian approach - massive brain drain to safer countries, lower quality of life, lower lifespans, etc. I'd rather be taxed out the wazoo in Germany than be tax-free in Somalia. I'd rather be in an earthquake in the USA or Japan than in China or Libya.
One persons individual rights inevitably conflict with someone else's individual rights. I have no idea what libertarianism is by your definition. For it to mean anything you have to lay out a value system that gives a default answer when one persons individual rights conflict with someone else's.
Are you opposed to all taxes? If not, then you believe in some violent aggression? Do you believe in protecting peoples rights with violent aggression? Will you use the force of government to prevent someone from dumping toxins into a river? How do libertarians deal with things like water rights? Borders? Can a mexican freely come across the border and get a job? I.e. is labor as free as capital?
I still have no idea what libertarianism is from your explanation.
I will say this, government has become so big and so complex I can't imagine ever unraveling it. The best I hope for is that someday we will actually shrink the government a bit instead of constant growth. The current government growth is unsustainable so it might be a forgone conclusion anyway. I am a libertarian (small l) because it is the only political philosophy which honestly wants to reduce the size of the government. I also want to bring awareness to people that the use of the law is the use of violence and that we should be aware that when make new laws, we understand that we are advocating violence against those who don't comply. For example, do we really want to arrest and lock someone in jail when they refuse to wear a seat belt and don't pay the fine or when they smoke a cigarette in a bar? Is that what we've become? If so, what's next? I do believe in the rule of law, but we've made the rule of law trivial and arbitrary... anyway, off the soapbox.
I'm still trying to find some core libertarian values that I can understand and is consistent. I'm not motivated to spend hours reading a book without that.
I'm starting to think I'm feeding a troll. I feel like you are just trying to get me to say, something like "Child labor should be legal." But I'm not saying that, I'm saying that the answer can be solved - over time - without violence.
How could you learn about a thing without investing some time?
A few reasons why reading the book would be worth your while:
1. Why do you believe violence is a necessary ingredient for the achievement of the above goals?
2. Is working toward a less violent world worthwhile, even if it seems remote at this moment?
3. To gain understanding. Even if you're sure there is no possible way you'd agree with anything you'll read in such a book, you would learn about the philosophy that is embraced by an estimated 10-20% of the American public, not enough to "win" an election, but certainly enough to lose one if you piss them off.
Go ahead and have the last word...
'I feel like you are just trying to get me to say, something like "Child labor should be legal."'
No, I'm trying to get you to explain how you prevent it without violence.
"I'm saying that the answer can be solved - over time - without violence."
How?
"How could you learn about a thing without investing some time?"
There is an effectively infinite number of things I could learn about, sadly I have a small finite amount of time. This makes me picky about what I spend time on.
"Why do you believe violence is a necessary ingredient for the achievement of the above goals?"
For many reasons. One, it's in individuals personal interest to take advantage of others. This could be child labor, pollution, outright fraud, breaking a contract, etc. How would you deal with these? I still don't know. Two, some people are plain crazy, and do stupid things. And that still leaves the more complicated issues like water rights. How does a libertarian system deal with water flowing throw a river on someones property? Can the person upstream suck it out or build a damn? Can they dump pollutants into it? How does a libertarian system resolve that, and more importantly how would you enforce the resolution?
"Is working toward a less violent world worthwhile, even if it seems remote at this moment?"
This doesn't mean anything. How do you deal with situations where one persons interests and liberty are in conflict with another persons interests and liberty?
The idea that everything a government and a society do is backed by violence is the flaw in the reasoning of just about every libertarian argument I've ever heard. It simply isn't true unless you so expand the definition of 'violence' that it becomes meaningless.
That might not be an argument that can support any and all regulation in every part of the world, but it seems to suggest that these particular regulations in this particular country were effective.
It seems you're trying to point to the absurdity of infinite regulation for total safety as an argument against all regulation, even if it is affordable and reasonable. I don't get it.
Plus, you know, lots of people would have died who could have been saved by stricter building codes. I'd rather be alive than have a couple more percentage points of economic growth every year.
That seems rather disingenuous to me. The real question is: would you pay more up front to reduce the risk of a catastrophe?
When the government mandates, you don't get to answer. It's a downside.
It's also an upside, as it avoids a social trap[1]. If companies can choose what they want, those that spend less will have a short-term advantage over those that spend more. If the government mandates a certain level of quality, then there's no competitive advantage to cutting corners (assuming the regulations are well enforced).
Modern building codes underpin property the property insurance which makes real-estate lending practical. They underpin much of the general liability insurance required for contemporary commercial transactions - not to mention making construction loans practical.
But I believe that even in a completely free market, there would be a lot of local voluntary contractual arrangements that would regulate many aspects of very small communities and building codes are certainly one thing people would consider when making such an arrangement.
As long as communities are competitive and contracts cannot be changed arbitrarily, this is not a problem. And if such contracts were not beneficial, these arrangements would lose to more sensible ones.
So, I'm not too concerned about what local governments do. Overall I think it maps to what we'd have in a free market, except where cities get too big and corruption becomes a problem.
One could easily argue that there is a worse safety/cost effectiveness tradeoff when you have to pay for corruption. Certainly when the average person is poorer than they would otherwise be, safety is harder to afford.
The important thing is competition and if you can drive 4 minutes in the opposite direction and get the community you want, competition exists.
There is no proof that the current ridiculous state of the matter, where everyone in the US constantly moves oneself together with 3 tons of steel for 2 to 3 hours a day is particularly productive either. If mobility was somewhat less easy, maybe we'd find another productivity hilltop which could be higher than the current one. In fact, we'll have to find such an alternative, less mobile way of life sooner of later.
By way of comparison though, let's imagine the fate of New York and rest of the eastern seaboard of the US were a similar quake to hit there. I think you would not fare so well, and I suspect the low cost of your Chevy Impala would give you little comfort.
In the context of 2nd/3rd world nations the point about strict codes being unfordable is reasonable.
Not quite so sure about that. Japan has spent trillions on idiotic keynesian construction stimulus for over 15 years. Only one round of that has Americans up in arms.
Per capita GDP growth in Japan over the last 20 years has been about the same as in the USA. They just don't import two million people a year -- rather wisely in my opinion.
I don't think the USA and Japan are really comparable in the amount of immigration they can support.
Also, considering issues like fresh water and food security, the country is in fact full. Japan maybe super-overfull, but the US is definitely full or overpopulated.
So in your view, it doesn't matter if the immigrants themselves are better off?
> Also, considering issues like fresh water and food security, the country is in fact full.
No it isn't. The EU has 820,000 km2 of arable land and 1,900 km3 of renewable water resources, and is self-sufficient in terms of food and water for a population of 490 million.
The US, on the other hand, has 1,650,000 km2 of arable land and 3,000 km3 of renewable water, and only has a population of 310 million. The US could easily support a population of 500 million or more without needing to import water or food.
In a world with about four billion people who would be better off moving to America, no.
> No it isn't.
It is true that we could turn America into India, bursting at the seems with people fed on poor rice and vegetable diets, and with poor access to open space. I happen to think that's a very bad idea. It's also probably unsustainable. Top soils are running down world-wide, including in America.
The US is ecologically over-full. We share this country with animals and plants, and they are suffering. The ideal sustainable population of America is probably down towards 200 million.
Who said anything about India? The EU has almost twice the population of the US, half the arable land area, and still manages to be self-sufficient in terms of food and water.
> The US is ecologically over-full. We share this country with animals and plants, and they are suffering.
So in your opinion it's better to let humans suffer than animals and plants?
Insurance companies often require higher standards than building code demands.
Also, politically, the reason some societies have strict building codes is because there is a group-- insurance companies-- that have an economic incentive to push for stronger codes.
I heard a lecture once by a structural engineer who had worked in hurricane alleys in Florida. He said there was a cycle of tightening up rules (for instance on the number of nails needed to hold down a roof) after big storms, then relaxing them as the years went by. Without a big storm to remind people just why the rules were tightened up, there was inevitable pressure to relax them in order to make it cheaper to build.
This is more off-topic, but another interesting thing he said was that you could get a sense of maximum local wind speeds by looking at airstream-type trailers. They are, as you might expect, extremely well engineered to resist the sorts of wind pressures you get at highway speeds, so winds of 60-80mph don't tend to rip the hide off them. But you get above a certain threshold, and they all tend to give way at once.
Another factor is, if the storm is big enough, the feds step in with FEMA and bailout people who are underinsured.
People living in Florida's hurricane alley pay nowhere near the cost of the risk of living there, and the result is overbuilding, and catastrophic property losses when the big one eventually does hit.
Its true that government standards get tightened and relaxed, just as they do in banking. Which is probably a good reason not to rely upon them. They are dumbed-down, lowest common denominator standards anyway.
In a recent storm I saw a tree that had visibly fallen against a fully brick house and had merely slid down the wall. The house stood almost immaculate (aside from the smeared wall), with a broken window and a crushed fence.
I have noticed that roofers here in Ontario are rather lax in competency here. My in-laws townhouse just got re-shingled and they lost an entire shingle sheet (it had never been touched by a nail). Their neighbour in the building lost two shingles, one above the other, on a joint in the plywood and above the black-paper. They're lucky the management company got on the ass of the roofers and got it fixed as we got hit by about 50mm that weekend.
It's not just roofers. We've done a lot of runs out to repair siding jobs. We've seen entire siding sheets that had been installed with a single nail. They'll do like 2-3 rows with barely more than a nail per sheet and then nail an entire row properly, but because there's so much weight on the row that's nailed correctly that heavy-winds can cause the sheets to stretch and then when a big gust hits it can pop the sheet out of the lock.
Seriously, being used to solid reinforced concrete or brick buildings, building shoddy wood structures covered with paper-thin siding in tornado or hurricane alleys and then crying your eyes out when the inevitable happens is almost funny.
Insurance companies can coexist perfectly with lax building codes so long as the market can bear higher premiums - if cost of damage multiplied by probability of earthquake over a time frame is lower than the increased cost of construction or remedial work then nothing gets done. Engineer cartels and political will to avoid preventable casualties at all costs are more important in saving lives here than the free market.
Seems like a good illustration of just how insidious systemic corruption can be to the development of a nation.
"The Industrial Revolution in Japan occurred during Meiji period." [September 1868 through July 1912]
Not saying I'd like that, but interesting to see how other things already operate that way.
It would also make it economical for insurance companies to quite literally be thieves, and uneconomical for individuals not to pay protection money to the most powerful (and likely also most expensive) insurance company.
While savvy investors may indeed underestimate low-probability risks, I take issue with any claim the mortgage bubble showed this. The sad end of that bubble was an extremely high probability event.
The main thing the debacle showed was the willingness of many people to believe fallacious arguments which made reference to claims about low probability events. Even there, the willingness of investors to believe that standard "this time it's different" line has been shown over and over again.
And, for some, having friends in the government to bail out the fools who bet on the bubble growing forever so you can get paid.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/fear_and_overr...
Or table here: http://www.schneier.com/essay-170.html
A free society is not exclusive of a strong government to protect property rights and handle externalities economically. It's when they take liberties with their charge when things get bad.
I feel compelled to point out that not all journalists from the New York Times necessarily reside in New York. Based on his past articles and Wikipedia entry, Norimitsu Onishi seems to have been the NYT's Tokyo bureau chief at one point in time.
Even with hedging of risks and liabilities involved in shoddy construction, even with information brokers in place to help people make informed decisions, even assuming ample construction of houses across the spectrum for all kinds of buyers, it definitely seems like without some kind of guiding hand that failure to consider long-term risks will lead to a lot of deaths.
What's worse is that a lot of the codes are in place to protect neighbors as well. Electrical wiring codes, for instance, are there to prevent fires. The hypothetical You might say that this turns into insurance and liability, but accurately judging the long-term risk and correlative damages sounds exactly like a government imposing regulations.
Building codes are, in fact, the market response to earlier problems with lots of houses burning and falling down. The fact that later generations who grew up with houses not burning or falling down don't have the insight to know this is not evidence that they're right.
And they always make the argument that it would be good for the poor, and it's always bullshit. The poor don't benefit from dying periodically because some jerk made a quicker buck than he otherwise would have.
You get shanty towns when people are too poor to afford anything else. People don't live in a shithole just for kicks, they do it because they have no choice. We shouldn't pretend this tradeoff doesn't exist.
You can build a surprisingly nice house for 1,000$ worth of materials, but there is no incentive when you build in the middle of a shanty town.
Of course, that $1000 house costs a full year of wages from a person earning $3-4/day and spending almost all of it on essentials. And this ignores the fact that many shantytowns occur in areas where property rights are weakly enforced - build a nice house, and 20 people will show up claiming they own it. Even if you have the money, you might instead be spending it on your children's education or something of that nature.
Shantytowns are a result of poverty and nonexistent property rights. Building codes, even if they were enforced, would not magically enable shantytown dwellers to afford something better.
Social disorder feeds off it's self, when you live in a shanty town and are likely to be robbed it is much more reasonably to spend an extra 5$ on alcohol and get to enjoy it vs invest it in stuff that you might not keep for vary long, do that once a week for 5 years and your talking about 1,300$. Some of the hidden advantages of building codes are allowing people to build nicer houses without standing out from their community.
The hidden advantage of building codes you describe only applies when everyone can afford that $1000 house.
That doesn't mean that the codes shouldn't be updated / refactored once in a while, but that's a pretty difficult thing to undertake, and there may not be political will...
Rip all of it out.
The scary thing is that the basement lights are still on the old wiring - roughly 1920's vintage. Fortunately, no gaslights left, although I do have one fitting in the upstairs sitting room!
turns out, most of the time that's actually too much for everyone else to fathom, frankly.
Does anyone know if Japan has some equivalent to the Canadian Iron Ring[1]? I feel like examples like this drive home how it's even more meaningful if you live in the Ring of Fire. (Which would be an ideal name for such a ring)
So I disagree with your analogy with the Hammurabi laws. I looked up the text:
"If a builder build a house for some one, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall in and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death."
"[...] If it ruin goods, he shall make compensation for all that has been ruined, and inasmuch as he did not construct properly this house which he built and it fell, he shall re-erect the house from his own means."
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/hamcode.html
It actually doesn't contain anything like a building code -- no regulation for how to build houses, what materials and methods can be used, what standards should be met. It is only tort: how you construct a building, government does not care, but it will hold you liable if it fails. This is a solidly "libertarian" type of law: uphold property rights, but do not intervene otherwise, and do not tell people how to do things.
Many people said the same thing about building codes after the 7.1 in Christchurch last September. That earthquake was 40km away from the city. Cruelly the 6.3 on Feb 22nd with its epicenter directly below the City showed the difference that proximity to the epicenter makes. Proximity to the epicenter and PGV is almost more important than magnitude when accessing how well buildings performed.
There are perfectly safe building designs which would never pass building codes. This is a huge barrier to innovation.
To be legally allowed to construct something that is not explicitly allowed by codes can require years and lots of money to hire engineers and lawyers.
Also, who writes these building codes? It's engineers employed by the construction and construction material industries. They have a perspective shaped by the status quo. So the codes require specific materials and techniques.
Codes also empower lots of unelected officals. A food safety inspector can shut down your plant and force you to throw away all of your products, with absolutely no form of appeal.
I don't really mind building codes. I just wish there were some objective criteria that designs went through. For example, if you could demonstrate your building can withstand an earthquake, regardless of it's method of construction, it's permissible. If you could demonstrate your food was not contaminated with bacteria, etc.
If you give a damn about any of this check out Mike Ohler's "The Fifty Dollar and Up Underground House Book" for the evils of building codes and Joel Salatin's "Everything I want to do is illegal" for food regulations.
705.1 General. Each portion of a building separated by one or more fire walls that comply with the
provisions of this section shall be considered a separate building. The extent and location of such fire walls shall
provide a complete separation. Where a fire wall also separates groups that are required to be separated by a fire
barrier wall, the most restrictive requirements of each separation shall apply. Fire walls located on property lines
shall also comply with Section 503.2. Such fire walls (party walls) shall be constructed without openings. (from the 2000 ICC building codes)
Plus it's not as though housing contractors actually build experimental buildings in earthquake test facilities to see if they comply. What they do is screw a bunch of prefabricated pieces together. All of which are accepted by the inspectors as following the codes. The result is a monoculture which is highly reluctant to accept new ideas. Remember that building boards consist of people from the construction industries, they people who make and use these materials.
The people who make the decisions on whether your buildings are unelected boards who have investments in the status quo. They can force you to spend 100s of thousands in engineering fees to convince them that your design is safe enough for you to live in.
The opposite of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Journalists look to Reddit to see what people are interested in, write the article, point back to self. Reap rewards.
Right? It's the content production business after all, just makes good business sense.
Interesting way to put it (implying that the issue was behavioral/cultural rather than one of engineering)
Japan was much better prepared because they have been facing this so long. Blaming this as a behavioural/cultural thing is ridiculous. I would bet that all the South and SE asian countries are better prepared for the next tsunami. We have been already through multiple tsunami warnings from then which did the job pretty well.
They're not morons.
The BBC had a "live feed" of a huge blazing fire, and the caption was "Government declares Nuclear Emergency".
The fire was at a natural gas storage tank...
I don't know if these news agencies like stoking mass panic, but you need to be a little sceptical about reporting in the media about "contentious" issues like nuclear power.
Here's the IAEA post about the current issue:
http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=1133
It's standard procedure in these situations to evacuate a 3km radius from the plant, just in case. If the situation gets slightly more... interesting (as in, they need to vent some steam), they evacuate 10km.
TL;DR: Let's wait and see what happens before declaring that Japan is about to be annihilated by nuclear fallout.
Edit: here's the current status of each reactor:
http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031207-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031212-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031213-e.... http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11031214-e....
I.e., all shut down. Need cooling. Pressure being vented in the Daiichi reactor.
not even readability can save me here.
Or you can just sign up; it's free.
Someone needed column inches.
Yet they still "needed" the Great Hanshin Earthquake 16 years ago to fix numerous issues, especially in disaster planning, prevention and response, and in infrastructure management.
At this point, you're trolling.
(Also, I think you meant to type "overstated".)