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Comment by cptaj | Hacker News Reader

For sure. I hate excessive regulation, but if companies keep poisoning the well, action has to be taken

The problem is that "excessive regulation" often means "regulations that inconvenience me". Often regulations are put in place to help somebody else, and they are met with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Some regulations help me. I'm glad I don't have to sort through all the pipes to find lead free ones. However some hurt me - I know very well how to do electric work and so having to hire an electrician costs me money I don't have (as opposed to an inspector who is much cheaper since they only verify I did the work right).

In my area the homeowner can do all electrical work. Still needs inspected.

Are you sure you need to hire an electrician in your jurisdiction?

This is specific to my town, if I lived across the street in a different town I wouldn't need to. Unfortunately I didn't know this detail until after I bought the house.

Typically, when this happens and it's a local law like this it's because something really bad happened in the past.

I know, for example, the town of Cripple Creek, CO requires all their buildings to be made out of bricks. Pretty annoying. But it's because the entire town burned down twice in the 19th century.

So, maybe, someone in the past killed a bunch of people with bad electrical work.

This isn't excessive at all. Making it easy to unsubscribe from things is totally reasonable to regulate in any world.

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