| ▲ | ASalazarMX 6 days ago |
| This happens in other countries too. Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions, but I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics. |
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| ▲ | jakjak123 6 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Its also a difficult problem. They need the right digger and the right crew at the right time and possibly the right weather to get the job done. Many times there will be weeks of juggling around schedules and suddenly the digging started three weeks after the road was finished |
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| ▲ | lo_zamoyski 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Let me ask you: how many buildings collapsed during the reign of Hammurabi? | | |
| ▲ | Carrok 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I.. I have no idea. I don't even know who Hammurabi is. Is there a point you're trying to make? If so, care to enlighten us without assuming we all have history degrees? | | |
| ▲ | insane_dreamer 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Hammurabi is an ancient ruler of Mesopotamia/Babylon who is famous for establishing a written code of laws, of which copies inscribed in steles have survived to this day). I don't know of it's the earliest example of a written legal code but certainly one of the earliest that we have a record of. Among these laws were civil penalties for builders who performed shoddy workmanship: > If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver. By the way, the Romans also had building codes, and engineers who built bridges and roads were liable for the durability of those structures, thus a tradition of over-engineering. | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > I don't know if it's the earliest example of a written legal code but certainly one of the earliest that we have a record of. It isn't, but it was discovered early and benefited from intense popular interest in the Bible. Popular interest in Mesopotamian history fell off sharply as it turned out that history generally differed from what the Bible said. It's still very early, roughly the 18th century BC. >> If a builder constructs a house for a man but does not make it conform to specifications so that a wall then buckles, that builder shall make that wall sound using his own silver. This is obviously a statement about who bears liability for fixing the wall, but it's funnier if you imagine it as a requirement for the builder to repair the wall with silver bricks, as a penalty for the original shoddy work. |
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| ▲ | 6equj5 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death. http://faculty.collin.edu/mbailey/hammurabi%27s%20laws.htm | | |
| ▲ | InDubioProRubio 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Thus the builders guild began to charge 50 silver for insurrance yearly from its members, which resulted to all road projects having a yearly 100 silver talent cost-addition on start. 5 years after the code, the empire went bankrupt |
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| ▲ | yulker 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Not obscure enough of a figure to necessitate a history degree. Well known for being one of the first to establish building codes. | | |
| ▲ | vundercind 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | He’s in the curriculums lots and lots of US schools, as part of teaching about the rule of law and eventually the rise of modern liberal democracy. Maybe not so much in other countries? For anyone who went through that, he’s another “the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell”-type answer form 6th grade tests or whatever. | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yet many including myself have never heard of him. Would it have been so much to ask to put a Wikipedia link and nerd-snipe some of us in the process? | | |
| ▲ | shiroiushi 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | johnnyanmac 6 days ago | parent [-] | | >Hammurabi is best known for having issued the Code of Hammurabi, which he claimed to have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. Unlike earlier Sumerian law codes, such as the Code of Ur-Nammu, which had focused on compensating the victim of the crime, the Law of Hammurabi was one of the first law codes to place greater emphasis on the physical punishment of the perpetrator. I don't think Wikipedia gets to the point quickly enough for this context to be relevant. | | |
| ▲ | shiroiushi 6 days ago | parent [-] | | That's a valid point, but I was just responding to someone who claimed that Hammurabi was so obscure that (in their minds) no one had heard of him, and additionally complained that there was no Wikipedia link. I feel like I should have used LMGTFY. Whether the OP was making a poorly-articulated point by merely bringing up Hammurabi and expecting the reader to know about his history with building codes, I think, is a separate issue. Anyone with a basic education should have heard of Hammurabi, though they may have forgotten the specifics about him. And finding a Wikipedia link on your own is trivial. | | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I did not claim that he was obscure nor that no one had heard of him. I merely mentioned that your and other claims that "anyone with a high school education has to have heard of him" is bollocks. I have both a high school and university degree and have never heard of him and don't think I need to have. Now you even claim someone with a "basic education" should've heard of him (meaning someone that didn't even finish high school). If you doubt that, Google about different countries' school systems and what would go for "basic" education. That said you definitely would've nerd sniped me with a link and if these replies here on HN hadn't been there to catch my interest first I would have just googled him. Basically by trying to be a smart ass and belittling others you harmed your own cause so to speak. | | |
| ▲ | thaumasiotes 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > I merely mentioned that your and other claims that "anyone with a high school education has to have heard of him" is bollocks. > I have both a high school and university degree and have never heard of him With all due respect, it's far more likely that you have heard of him, but you didn't retain the information. | | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 5 days ago | parent [-] | | As I mentioned in a sibling thread, you are, with all due respect, assuming very specific, potentially very local schooling. I can't say where you grew up and at what time and what the curriculum would always contain. However, whatever your schooling included, after reading through the entirety of the Wikipedia article I can say with absolute certainty that none of it rang any bells and it very much was not part of my schooling and I did not happen to come across it afterwards by accident such as through this article. Like also hinted at in that sibling thread, there are other quite local historic figures I could cite which I know for a fact are locally well known but not otherwise. All through talking to colleagues and friends from other countries (or even just parts within a single country). What really got me both in your and their replies is this absolutist certainty. The world is so full of differences and yet somehow some people feel the need to express things like you do here in such absolute terms and no other realities seem to be possible to exist. |
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| ▲ | shiroiushi 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >I have both a high school and university degree and have never heard of him I question the value of your education. Have you also never heard of Shakespeare or Bach? | | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Very much have. Don't care much for one, do care for some of the other. The belittling continues I see. Have you heard of Terry Fox? Anyone with an elementary school education surely has. |
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| ▲ | InitialLastName 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I am going to guess (based on vocabulary evidence) that the person you responded to is British. You should be aware that the UK education system does not work like the US system (where you get general education including history before going into a subject-focused college degree program at 18). You're more likely to start the subject-focused program at ~16 (and possibly be aiming your focus in that direction earlier than that), which means the general studies curriculum has to be constricted. |
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| ▲ | PittleyDunkin 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Would it be so hard to google an unknown figure? Jesus christ, open the schools. If you're confused there's much less hostile ways to indicate you want explanation. | | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 6 days ago | parent [-] | | For me it's not so much about that but the "how". Parent definitely would've nerd sniped me with a link and if these replies here on HN hadn't been there to catch my interest first I would have just googled him. Basically by trying to be a smart ass and belittling others they harmed their own cause of making Hammurabi more widely known. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > Basically by trying to be a smart ass and belittling others You are reading way too much into someone not documenting their comment. > they harmed their own cause To me it looks like you and others paid even more attention this way. > their own cause of making Hammurabi more widely known I don't think that was their goal? | | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 6 days ago | parent [-] | | I might actually agree with you if I hadn't read all the other replies shiroiushi has made since. I firmly believe he's out on some crusade to belittle everyone he can now that didn't have the exact same education as him. Or just do it for kicks and to feel better about himself. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 6 days ago | parent [-] | | > all the other replies shiroiushi has made But it's lo_zamoyski that made the reference. | | |
| ▲ | tharkun__ 6 days ago | parent [-] | | And yulker is the one that I replied to. That's all fair enough and yes yulker had quite some passive aggressiveness swinging in that "doesn't need a history degree" to start with. Yet shiroiushi is the one directly insulting my (and others that I'm referencing as not having had to have heard of him)'s education without knowing anything about said education. Depending on very specific and exact place of upbringing and schooling, there are a myriad of differences in what is regular curriculum or not. This is a global forum too, so it's even "worse" in that sense for making very absolute statements like shiroiushi has. Has every Bachelor of Computer Science had to take a course that included learning about how regular expressions are implemented and had to implement a regular expression parser? I sure did, mandatory course and wouldn't have been able to get the BA and then go on from that even further without it at my university. Yet I've met people from other universities that didn't. Do I insult them and their education for it? I don't! | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Well you said "parent" so I thought you didn't mean shiroiushi. Yes shiroiushi is being belittling, thanks for the clarification of what you meant then. |
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| ▲ | nasmorn 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just a degree in Sid Meiers Civilization | |
| ▲ | selimthegrim 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Also the namesake of a board game. |
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| ▲ | PittleyDunkin 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | He's a rather famous chap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi Regardless, I suspect there's a point being made about the timeless ineptitude of bureaucracy (even if I don't agree with it—some cultures are notably more competent at managing logistics of public works than other are). | |
| ▲ | fragmede 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | one of my classmates really resented having to take GE classes outside his major in order to graduate but looking back on it, he said they really helped him out in ways he didn't expect. | |
| ▲ | mrexroad 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To be fair, Hammurabi’s code is often taught in middle/high school social studies (history). | | |
| ▲ | Carrok 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Funny, I graduated middle and high school, paid attention in class, and have never heard of him. It's almost like different states and school districts have different curricula. |
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| ▲ | HPsquared 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The antithesis to the "limited liability corporation". | |
| ▲ | buildsjets 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Wow. This was basic secondary school history when I was educated. The code of Hammurabi is considered the basis of the western judicial tradition. This baseline knowledge I would expect in any peer, it does not require a specialized degree or study. The collective infantilization of our scholastic standards is frightening. | | |
| ▲ | vundercind 5 days ago | parent [-] | | It's still in there. You can find the US state standards used to set baseline requirements ("learning standards") for school district curriculums online, for most (all?) states. Let's take an infamously-bad state for education ("Thank God For Mississippi") and famously good one (Massachussetts). Cmd/ctrl-F "hamm" on this one to find it for Mississippi: https://www.mdek12.org/sites/default/files/Page_Docs/final_2... (Theirs is a little weird [probably because their government's, you know, bad] and this comes from a non-profit organization, but it seems to in-fact be the official curriculum standards for their actual BOE, as well) Here's Massachusetts: https://www.doe.mass.edu/frameworks/hss/2018-12.pdf Same deal, you'll find it with a search ("Hamm" also finds one occurrence of Muhammad, in this case, though, but it does get a few hits on Hammurabi) A person may have missed it due to: 1) going to schools outside the US that maybe don't emphasize Hammurabi, or 2) moving between US school systems that don't teach Hammurabi in the same year(s), such that they leave one before it's taught and arrive at the other after it's been taught. | | |
| ▲ | jayrot 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Another very likely explanation is that it WAS taught, but was simply forgotten. Which is completely forgivable. It's not like 6th grade had an intensive 3 month unit on Hammurabi. |
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| ▲ | btreecat 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 1? 1000? Regardless the answer, the lack of context makes the figure meaningless. | |
| ▲ | written-beyond 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm guessing exactly equal to the number of building contractors he or his donors had beef with | |
| ▲ | 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ASalazarMX 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | He reigned for 42 years (1792–1750 BC), so I hope not too many. | |
| ▲ | kergonath 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Considering that we don't even know how many buildings there were at that time, I don't think anyone can give you an answer with any certainty. But that was your point? |
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| ▲ | brnt 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Here, the gov gives time windows for utility owners to dig and do maintenance, after which it'll be repaved. If you want to do maintenance on your infra, you request a timeslot and the gov groups the maintenance (eg sewer and gas). You best not miss your window. |
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| ▲ | MikeTheGreat 6 days ago | parent [-] | | Sure, but what happens if you have maintenance issues that arise after the window closes? Are we really going to tell people that they can't live without sewer / clean water / electricity / whatever because the window closed 2 months ago and their problem didn't start until today? | | |
| ▲ | scherlock 6 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's a carrot, not a stick. It's designed to spread the digging.and repaving costs around so the work is cheaper. It's more that the city knows it's doing work in an area, digging up the road, so they tell all the utilities, hey if you are thinking of doing work on Main Ave, we'll be starting work on September 3rd, if tell us now and can get a crew out before September 21st, you won't need to pay to excavate and repave. | |
| ▲ | brnt 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Emergencies are emergencies. Maintenance is largely required to be scheduled, so utilities cannot wait until things break, they'll be required to perform maintenance/replace at pre-established frequencies. So we might not know when in 2030 the road gets torn up, but we do know it will be, since maintenance is required that year on infra X,Y,Z. Scheduling of the precise dates is then done according to the window. |
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| ▲ | tourmalinetaco 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| We were getting our roads redone in my town and the county commissioner ordered an asphalt miller to run on one singular road, when we needed it (and said for it to run) on all of them. It cost us the same to run it on one road or all of them, because most of the costs were transport of machinery. So I definitely lean towards ineptitude. |
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| ▲ | kamaal 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >>This happens in other countries too. This is everyday life in India. A big budget is sanctioned to build a road. Road gets built, then a month or two later, some body forgets they didn't do the sanitary/sewage pipes well enough and manholes are now overflowing, they tear down the whole road and then just leave it as is. The process restarts again in two years or so. Here is the rub- The guy who builds it at the first place knows all this so builds it as cheaply as they can get away with. Its just how corruption works, and money flow from tax payers to politically well connected contractors(often the politicians themselves, as the contractors are just shell companies owned by contractors). Even if the company is black listed a new one can always be floated next time. >>I suspect local governments are just inept at logistics. No they are just corrupt. Its easy money. No audits, no accountability and no questions of any kind. |
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| ▲ | hulitu 6 days ago | parent [-] | | You just described the process in a big central european country.
I was wondering why a company from 300 km away fixes the local road ( an almost insignificant road). |
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| ▲ | citizenpaul 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >inept This is not a place where Hanlon's razor applies. Gov construction is rotten all the way through as matter of course and policy. High volume material industries are the easiest to commit fraud. Especially when the bureaucrat that signs the checks is never going to bother themselves by checking the real world shipments match to the bills. And that is just the easy part to check, checking for fudging numbers requires real work. Its been going on so long that the corruption is now part of the system. Its trivial to look at various costs and see the "$10,000" hammer all over the place. Or how instead of price going down at scale it goes up. I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though, so do some research if you are interested. |
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| ▲ | gopher_space 5 days ago | parent [-] | | > I probably will not convince you of this in a comment though I mean your statement goes against all of my experience and the experience of every person I've met IRL, but I think you're confusing redundancy, rent-seeking, and (yes) incompetence with criminal intent. Do you have any friends that work for a city? I'd just ask them about government work in general. The point of the domain is orthogonal to the business world, so you need someone to translate and explain what you're looking at. Trivial example: You walk into a city garage and see mechanics working on their own vehicles. Are these government employees committing fraud? The answer will *depend on local weather*. There's a direct connection between e.g. annual snowfall and paying people to sit on their asses, and you'll need to appreciate that connection to understand what's going on around you. |
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| ▲ | alextingle 6 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Simply forcing the utilities people to properly repair roads after they have been dug up would be sufficient. |
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| ▲ | j16sdiz 6 days ago | parent [-] | | No. Another side of the problem is how often we need close a road to dig it up. If we just enforce the quality, we will just wasting more time and money for more works and less time actually using them . Proper solution would be a utility duct or tunnel. |
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| ▲ | hulitu 6 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Some people theorize that it's done because of internal rivalries between dependencies/political factions Or maybe corruption ?
All utility builders have to fix the road -> more work -> more profit. |
