> Hell most of the licensed contractors I hire (electric, plumbing, etc) don’t bother to pull permits, even for new work.
Yeah, it’s your responsibility as a homeowner to get the permit (either get it yourself or see that the contractor does). Even if you don’t think the permit inspectors are doing anything in terms of quality control, the permit helps you to pass inspections as part of the sale process and will limit your insurance exposure if there’s ever an issue. There’s probably fine print in your insurance contract saying that all work shall be permitted as required.
(Well/septic tend to get more scrutiny at a sale but the status of old renovations/remodels in general are often pretty opaque.)
If too many people start doing it, it becomes an issue of overdrawing groundwater. This leads to an arms race of digging ever deeper wells to reach the remaining groundwater, and on top of that starts leading to ground subsidence as ground formerly full of water dries out and compacts.
Off the top of my head, there is massive groundwater subsidence in the Central Valley of California, Mexico City, and Jakarta due to this issue, at rates measured in feet per year. This makes the land prone to flooding, and also damages buildings and infrastructure since the subsidence is generally not evenly spread out.