Five years ago the Israeli Standards Insititute proclaimed the Standard 5281 that certifies "Green Buildings". Like all Israeli regulations, it is not only impossibly demanding but also absurd and self-contradicting. In spite of the tremendous demand for "Green Buildings" (young people here is crazy for the environment and ready to pay more for a "green" apartment) only five projects received certification.
Now the British Green Standard company was hired to help rewrite the standard.
BTW, the Ministry of Health forbids the reuse of grey water in domestic situations. The Israeli Standard demands it. I wanted to be active in this field, but it is dead.
5 comments:
The contradictions are no accident. The State WANTS you to be in violation of one law or another at all times. This way, if you cross them, they can treat you as a criminal who has no rights. Other citizens in good standing have no sympathy for "criminals" so they will not object when the authorities lead you away.
K
You are seeing a pattern where there is none. The State is a blind dumb machine. At least, this one.
If the effect is not intentional, at the very least there is no force within the State pushing back against the State going in that direction, so over time it drifts that way. Is it in the interest of the State and its cogs the bureaucrats (and their supporting cast) that you be in full compliance with simple, easy to understand rules and put them out of a job? Even the work that you do (and I do) would be endangered if all businesses had to contend with were simple common sense rules and not a labyrinth maze that no ordinary person can find his way thru unassisted.
From the Keynesian POV (as misunderstood by Obama and his crowd) such requirements "stimulate" the economy - the bureaucrat has a job drawing up and enforcing the rules, you have a job trying to comply with them, contractors must built all sorts of ADA ramps, etc., so the more rules we have the more jobs there will be and the richer we will all become!
K
Bureaucrats (I am speaking from personal experience) desperately need clear rules and a large part of their time is spent on writing comprehensive rulebooks that will be applicable to every situation. Unfortunately, when you finish drawing up the rules for driving diligences - you are charged with signing permits for Ford A. So you try to apply the horse-regulations to internal combustion cars. Your son will have to face the problem of regulating electric cars.
There's no doubt that fast moving markets outrace slow moving lawmakers. The laws concerning telephone wiretapping, piracy, etc. are all oriented toward a point to point model and are nonsensical when applied to a digital packet switched network, so courts have to somehow fit the square peg in the round hole. By the time they fix the laws, the technology will have moved too and they will still be behind. In a way this is good - a the internet would never have grown the way it did if it was in a regulatory straightjacket.
K
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