No, you need the codes. The world is not just you. If your building starts blazing, it's not going to just stop. Those people called firemen have to go and stop it, put themselves at greater risk by saving your rickety building before it destroys the buildings of others that did bother to follow codes. Now the firemen have to go, the ER gets full, etc all because you didn't think much of the regulations. Now, we the tax-payors have to foot the bill and the firemen potential male unnecessary sacrifice, etc. You can't pawn off safety as assumed risk because society has to deal with the repercussions (you can get out paying by just going bankrupt or shooting yourself, whatever but we still have to pay).

Now, I think for Hacker Dojo, there potentially is a bit of unfairness going on but this is about a larger point.

I dont agree with your point. You fail to understand several things. I believe that when you have a building you need to be insured on your property, right ? Then, the lack of proper fire safety devices in your building should raise the risk on your property, and therefore raise significantly the cost of your building insurance. Should your building burn in flames and spread around, damaging a few other buildings around, your insurance would cover the costs (just like your car insurance covers the costs when you injure a 3rd party in an accident). On top of that, the surrounding property owners could sue you for financial reparations for lost opportunities (business, rent, etc...) for which you would have to pay.

In the end, anyway, the insurance contract would cover most of the damage costs. That's why insurance systems exist and are usually mandatory. And the free market should reflect the cost of having no fire protection in your property. Net, you would not need to have regulations to enforce that, the costs themselves would probably entice you to get at least minimum fire protection, based on the insurances recommendations.

Seriously, most people seem to be believe that regulations have existed forever and that civilization was born with it. On the contrary, the amount of regulations we deal with nowadays is a very recent thing in History, and most people lived before with other systems in place to ensure their safety without the need of Big-Ass Governments.

Not to be mean but I don't think you have any idea whst you're talking about. Lawsuit is your answer? Really? So you damage my priority, now I have to get a lawyer to sue you. You file bankruptcy or kill yourself, I'm now left holding the bag.

Insurance? Really, insurance? If you don't like building codes, who says you're going to get insurance?

What if you start getting behind on your bills? Now I'm left holding the bag again.

Your argument is a strawman. No one says governments have always existed and civilization could nor have existed without them. That's stupid, why say that? It's a fact that things were much more dangerous and more likely to be fatal before regulations that enforce minimum safety standards. So yeah, civilization would exist, it would just be more dangerous. What a silly argument.

Also, if what you said was true about this magical insurance compliance then there wouldn't be any buildings in active use that don't conform to minimum safety because we have this free market with perfect actors that pay their bills or some such nonesense.

Now, the second thing, how is your magic lawsuit/insurance fix going to bring back the dead? Or do they have to stay dead due to your rickety building because that's one thing the magic free market can't do.

Come on this is hard to take seriously, and yet I'm accused of not understanding the issues.

>your responsibility as a person entering that building to understand the risks of being there - and refuse to enter/stay inside if you think the lack of sprinklers/fire exits is posing you a serious concern.

I'd rather read an impenetrable 10 page EULA than examine an entire building (with absolutely no expertise) for the possibility that it might kill me.

Maybe a compromise would be that the inspectors would show up, do their code inspection, then put a big sign lined in blinking red neon on every external door that says every single thing that's wrong with the building, how it doesn't care about the disabled or whether you burn to death.

Could even become trendy amongst the laissez-faire set.

This putting-up-signs thing has happened in a way, and we know how this turns out. In some rural areas there are places where the fire brigade is not paid for through local taxes, homeowners have to contract individually with the fire services to come.

When a homeowner has a fire put but failed to pay the firemen the fire brigade does come out, makes sure that the inhabitants are safe, and then lets the house burn down and makes sure that is does not spread to the neighbors, who have paid for fire service.

Next thing that happens, everyone hates on the fire brigade because they did not put out the fire. People need to be prevented from shooting themselves in the feet.

Well if they did not pay for the fire brigade, what do they expect ?? It's like wanted the cake without paying the bill. I do not see anything shocking in your story. If I do not pay for a service, for an insurance, I am not supposed to get the benefit from it. It's perfectly natural.

This attitude doesn't conform to observed practice. Every time this happens people from that community come out, saying the firemen should have stepped up even though that party did not pay. There seems to be a feeling that we are our brother's keeper.

(There's also the other problem that when someone's house burns down, such a person will likely become a ward of the state, and that can't be allowed to happen. That's why in some countries it's mandatory to carry fire insurance.)

there is a vanishingly small percentage of establishments for which is makes economic sense to be accessible to various forms of handicapped people. the federal ada laws are a way of spreading the cost of catering to the disabled across all of society, rather than concentrating it on the heads of the disabled themselves.