[ExI] Tinkerers: a graphic novel about making things (David Brin)

[Bryan Bishop]

2010/11/19 Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>:
> Does anyone have ideas on why the final bit "wasn't entirely legal"?  I
> suspect that
> it may have been, "large construction without a permit, which permit
> requires
> months of government approvals and committee meetings, during which time the
> community that needed that bridge for its economy continues to suffer".  If
> that is
> so, I think it would have been better to clearly state it, because I suspect
> a lot of
> the people who would most benefit from reading this are not able to intuit
> that.

That was my guess as well. I have seen a number of instances where
businesses complain about the piles and piles of rules, regulations,
laws, fees, taxes, patent applications, patent restrictions,
cross-licensing agreements, mineral rights, airspace rights, export
restrictions, import restrictions, healthcare agreements,
subcontracting agreements, and bribes required just to begin
manufacturing or building something somewhere. I can imagine it
becomes burdensome.

Some of this, I would guess, is completely useful and necessary, like
environmental impact studies and other individual line items that look
beneficial, but that (overall) become too burdensome for any
reasonable person to bother to deal with. Instead, you could just move
to another country to build your factory and not have to deal with 80%
of the initial overhead.

I remember seeing interesting suggestions like "every 4 years, the US
must throw away its law code and rewrite it" as a way to make things
more manageable, an interesting solution, but probably impractical. I
think this poses an interesting question though.. is it primarily all
of this overhead required before building and making things in the US
that limits business? or cultural stigmas towards this sort of
activity and understanding it?

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507