A Canadian visiting Japan claims the building codes saved his life.
"I feel I owe my life to Japanese building standards right now," Newman said Monday. "It was very strong shaking on that railway platform. We were three storeys up and I was thinking this thing was going to come down. And we had a train with us.
3800 years ago, the the Code of Hammurabi was carved in stone, and included what is considered to be the first building code. That's way too long for Libertarians, who consider building codes evil. A year ago, in Comparing Haiti and Chile: Did Building Codes Save Lives? I noted that the libertarian position was that codes "are an intrusion into the private matters of citizens." The anti-Obama types on Ron Paul's forum about the subject note that "leftist Democrat/progressive/liberal/commie will never accept the idea that private citizens and free markets will provide safe goods. Government is God and all that Government regulates is good. Not regulated = evil."
If only we could get our building codes improved in the U.S.