I, for one, salute the everyday heroes who bravely faced scorn to save that man from moral hazard.
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I think this is a bit of an overstatement. There are copies of the relevant safety standards kept in reference libraries - It’s not as if the standards are literally unobtainable without paying - there’s an investment of time and resources in travelling to a public library.
If someone who is in business needs to refer to the standards frequently, then perhaps it makes economic sense to buy a personal copy.
To read the law online I need to invest ~$500~$1000 in a PC and an internet connection - perhaps most people today have already made that investment and then expect the law and standards incorporated by reference to be available at no additional cost - but it’s not obvious to me why the law or standards should necessarily be provided free online versus free in printed form at a public library.
The alternative would be for the taxpayer to subsidise the standards institutes and then publish the resulting standards freely, but why should the public at large pay for the upkeep of rules that they never encounter or have to directly abide by? There’s actually nothing wrong with standards bodies funding themselves by charging for printed copies of the appropriate standards they’ve developed.
e.g. It costs $33 to get a drivers license in California, which is needed to drive legally. We could have it so that driving licenses were issued freely, but then it’s a tax on people who can manage with the bus or train. Why should it be any different to pay a small fee to obtain the standards from ASTM, NFPA, and ASHRAE?
They encounter those rules every time they enter a building, whether they’re aware of it or not.
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https://www.astm.org/READINGLIBRARY/
The NFPA and ASTM both make the standards available to read for free. Sure you have to register and give them an email account, but what is the big deal in doing that?
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Someone opined:
Why should it be any different to pay a small fee to obtain the standards from ASTM, NFPA, and ASHRAE?
…and then …
The NFPA and ASTM both make the standards available to read for free.
Far be it from me to suggest dismissive ignorance on the part of the posters.
HAVE YOU LOOKED AT THE ASTM PRICES? They are worse than scientific journals. $51 for a damn lead testing document is neither free nor a small fee, and only the beginning of payouts.
Go ahead, search on “ASTM D3559-15”.
Note that little bit about how referred and referring documents must be purchased separately.
Someone please explain to me how this is not legalized gouging and gatekeeping at its worst, and all the more egregious since the standards are written into public law with public monies. Fuck! I already paid for that.
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A license and access to the laws are separate things. Our taxes pay the lawmakers to make the laws, so the laws have been paid for. They also make laws about pedestrians, do you think everyone should have to pay for a pedestrian’s license to know what those laws are? They make laws about what people can do with rainwater. Do you think everyone who could possibly get rained on should have to pay a can-get-wet license fee? There are laws about how a victim can legally respond to being assaulted, should everyone have to pay for an assault victim’s license to know what those laws are?
We do already pay the lawmakers to make the laws. Those laws should be publicly-owned, not trade secrets owned by their buddies or by whoever bribed them the most. That is corruption. Of course the standards agencies have costs and need to get paid, no argument with that, but granting them indefinite private rent-seeking on publicly-owned property doesn’t seem the right solution either.
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Correct, they fight fires.
Other government entities are responsible for tax collection.
FTFY
@salvarsan provides more detail
aye, there’s the rub
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Thank you actually, I need a copy of that very document. Because I work to some of these standards. I am their consumer. I hear you. I see it differently.
Someone please explain to me how this is not legalized gouging and gatekeeping at its worst, and all the more egregious since the standards are written into public law with public monies. Fuck! I already paid for that.
Gladly. No, you didn’t pay for that. The process by which these standards are arrived at are not generally taxpayer funded. They are arrived at through a consensus process with STAKEHOLDERS, not shareholders, determining the final standards and the processes by which they are updated to ‘best practices’ by, and get this, practitioners. This doesn’t happen for free, and I would prefer that my ASTM standards not contain advertisements since the rest of the process is designed to manage (not eliminate) conflicts of interest, leading to the pay model we have today.
From your armchair I am sure that 500 dollars for a full set of documents to read and comprehend in order to fully comply with the letter of the law sounds like a lot.
But with that 500 dollars and my professional experience I would be capable of turning that into a job, a living, for myself. Quite possibly for a few other people too, because I licensed a copy of a professional standard from a non-profit to pay for the time and professional experience of the -stakeholders- who developed the standards, in order to satisfy the underwriters of the banks, insurers, or other commercial ventures (as well as state and federal environmental regulators) that ultimately pay for and authorize (or don’t!) professional services like lead testing.
I basically think your outrage is misplaced. This system has led to a national set of professional standards in many fields, and at little to no public expense.
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When a professional standard is written into public law, it obligates purchase of the professional document for compliance with a (public) law and sidesteps that little “just powers from consent of the governed” thingy and jumps straight into plutocratic oligarchy.
Oh. We’re there already.
Never mind.
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straight into it? No pausing at kleptocracy for a breather on the way down?
We’ve had “kleptocracy-lite” for decades.
It’s included in going from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
The link in my post links to the reading room for ASTM so anyone can read the standards, after providing an email address and creating an account. All provided for free to anyone that is willing to read them. Sure they are not the hard copy books that costs the organizations money to organize and publish. God forbid they recover some of the costs to put the standards together for the professionals in the industries that need them daily, while also providing a portal for anyone to peruse the standards for no cost. NFPA has a similar portal, I use it often when I have my computer open already for work and don’t want to walk to my vehicle for the hard copy version.
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I was just about to say that I know that the IBC and NFPA offer the full text of their standards online. UL is a little bit trickier, but you can access most of it for free.
Well accordingly, in order to explain why you need to wear shackles and live in an outbuilding and sort out how you like to give away that privilege on behalf of others, you’ll need to sign onto the level 4 memberships in WOKE, Methylationprom, and ThalamusCoin.
Oh, and for breaking oversight for the public, thanks there! Only your phantom Sig official’s menace can know if the Latinos have licensed impossible wall standards.
Nobody wants to be out cash to be broken in a way you were when crowded into a room with SME (no, not mechanical engineers in particular, just subject matter experts) delegates of some bespoke purveyance. It is reality TV for permissible outlet heights. With apologies to Alphabet and people in compliance offices keeping a skeleton of constructible legality for reference, alphabet soup is heinous and deprecation is rolling well ahead, as much as you may like to say you’re in the Telegraph Standards Office in 1890 and the getting’s fine.
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You must know it’s a bit of a reflexive question to ask if electricians whose certification and license are in a twisty maze of passages, all alike to the uninitiated, are going to be hired. Oh look, they brought builders who want to case in the access components! From then perhaps it’s a matter of the City Engineer’s FAQ on license fashion and whether the CEUs look overwhelmingly bad?
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Well, there’s the large paragraph on that page that says ‘if the law defers to it, this might almost be something that used to be it.’ Page to use https (check!) take user aside and ask ‘what do you think the law ought to be?’
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Additionally, that professional standard was already written into service contracts as best practice by places like banks and insurers and lawyers - when they review anything they are lending you money for, covering you for, or practicing due diligence on your behalf about.
Miss scarlet I do declare.
We will forever keep that secret within la raza! 
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