I would not want to live in a house whose builders took an “innovative” approach to dealing with “regulation”. Building codes are often written in blood.
Not everyone is so rich. People should have the choice about whether or not they want an unnecessarily expensive house. Regulations assume one size fits all and that everyone wants the same thing This isn't true. and trying to outlaw poverty doesn't work, it just makes things worse.
I wouldn't want to live in a house that was unnecessarily complicated to point of doubling it's cost just because of endless regulations forced vast increases in costs. You should see one of the links shared above: it talks a great deal about what's driving the increased costs in housing and it's all to do with increased building complexity, much driven by regulation.
Similarly, the 2021 IRC now requires a surge protective device at the service entrance. This doesn't protect anyone's life, and may protect your TV or cable modem if you live in a lightning-prone area. Its cost-effectiveness decreases in areas that don't get lightning strikes.
I think it's OK for the government to establish a floor on the quality of things, as long as they do it with the understanding that nothing happens for free, everything is a tradeoff, and better things cost more. So it's generally preferable when the legal floor is mostly focused on safety (where the tradeoff to something cheaper could be someone's life or limb), but more questionable when it's for things that don't relate to safety, where it would be better to let the individual make the tradeoff for themselves.
Regulations don't assume one size fit all, rather they tell you the minimum standard you must meet to participate in this, at least in our society.
If you think egress requirements and insulation requirements are too restrictive for you, then you don't belong in an industry that builds where you live and work.
The Titan submersible didn't violate "regulations", though, it violated industry standards. Standards that are updated more often than regulations. In so doing, it it was denied a certification. Since it operated in international waters only, there were no applicable regulations to evade.
Regulatory bodies which are poorly funded may write overly restrictive rules because they don't have the resources to do a more comprehensive assessment. In particular, many HUD rules are split into "single-family houses" and "everything else", with little consideration for small apartment buildings, townhouses and other "missing middle". The requirements for houses are much less strict than for apartments, and construction costs per square foot are correspondingly lower for detached single-family homes.
If you live in a detached SFH built after 1970, it's arguable that you already live in a structure where the builders took an "innovative" approach to dealing with regulations, because it was built to the lower house standards and not the stricter apartment standards. And if it was built before the 1970s, the regulations were probably very lax.
Nonetheless, I think the solution must be to reexamine the regulations, rather than evade them. But this "written in blood" is a thought-terminating cliche that prevents progress.
Regulation is just an enabler of laziness.