I like you very much, John, but I don't like that kind of behavior.

You mentioned passive-aggression. The truth is that raging on an internet messageboard is one of the ways it shows. One of the main features of passive-aggressive behavior is a tendency to try to make others angry, to frustrate others and to pick fights. Thats what you've done in the Dungeon more than anything else. If you wanted to do something productive, you could do political work in your local community, fund a lawsuit to change things, something like that. But arguing and insulting your friends isn't cool. That won't help anything. If you wanted to vent, I could understand. But that doesn't include attacking people that have been your friends.

Another case is where a requirement is made that makes no sense, or even forces the builder to take a path that's not as good as what they would have done without the requirement. Case in point, a friend of mine built a restaurant and bar and the grills purchased were much better than code required. So the health inspector made him pull them out and get crappy ones that met code. Stupid!

Another case in point, the poor buggers in Austin just found themselves strapped with a law that says they cannot add on to the homes or make improvements in certain areas. And in some cases, it even prevents rebuilding after a catastrophe. If a house burns down, sometimes it cannot be rebuilt as it was and has to be made smaller. I'm not talking about wiring or structural changes, I'm talking about size. Big Brother Austin ( maybe I should have said big sister there ) wants to control the size of properties placed on the owners' lots. Owners rights are dwindling all the time, eroded by Big Brother.

In each of these cases, I'd say it falls into a category of taxation without representation. Did any of these people affected vote on those zoning laws? Probably not. They got slipped in, under the wire. Many of them are pretty hard to defend. Civil engineers have the unenviable jobs of being red tape administrators more than engineers. Their job is to research codes and make sure they can pass them rather than to actually design bulings that make sense. It's a sad state of affairs.