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b"If you've never thought about how development regulations get handed down from the Federal government to the states and then to local municipalities, here's your chance.\\n\\nJad and I explore the topic of building permits in local cities (specifically Austin in this case) and consider the pros and cons of such laws.\\n\\n\\n\\nTranscript of Podcast\\n\\n [Recorded Audio]\\n\\n Speaker 1: Does the NSA collect any type of data at\\n all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?\\n\\n Speaker 2: No, sir.\\n\\n Kevin: Hello, and welcome to the JK podcast, an anti-authoritarian\\n philosophical endeavor recorded in Austin, Texas.\\xa0 We draw our topics from the\\n entire scope of the human experience with central connecting themes focused on the\\n grand ideas of liberty, humanity, and equality.\\xa0 The JK Podcast is hosted by Jad\\n Davis and Kevin Ludlow.\\xa0 Welcome back to another episode.\\n\\n If you\\u2019ve never thought about how the development regulations get handed down\\n from the federal government to the states, and then to the local municipalities,\\n here\\u2019s your chance.\\xa0 Jad and I explore the topic of building permits in\\n local cities - specifically within Austin in this case - and consider the pros and cons\\n of such laws.\\n\\n Jad:\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 You know, here\\u2019s my native\\n position is when I read the thing \\u2013 so read the description of this problem, the\\n problem being that permits expire after what is it, five years, three years?\\n\\n Kevin: It depends on -\\n\\n Jad:\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 Okay.\\n\\n Kevin: - what it is, I think.\\n\\n Jad:\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 So building permits expire after some\\n period of time and they\\u2019re going to reverse that rule or let it lax so that\\n building permits will last indefinitely and the problem this brings up is that\\n there\\u2019s all these old permits that have expired, but they will suddenly be\\n unexpired, but they might be building codes from the 80s or 90s or whatever when\\n apparently you could make you know, skyscrapers out of mud and brick that would\\n collapse at the first sign of rain or something, I\\u2019m not sure what the danger is\\n really but apparently, there\\u2019s some awful hazards.\\xa0 So I don't know,\\n it\\u2019s when I\\u2019m reading this thing I\\u2019m like, I don\\u2019t really have\\n any grounds upon which to pick a side, you know what I mean?\\n\\n Kevin: Right.\\n\\n Jad:\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 I just don\\u2019t know how to reason\\n that sort of thing and I don't know, that\\u2019s kinda where I get to I guess.\\n\\n Kevin: Well I can give you some points of reason that I\\u2019ve\\n thought of over the years that I\\u2019ve definitely presented to various neighborhood\\n groups.\\xa0 One of the things that really bothers me about a lot of the laws that\\n they put into place are that you know, most of these things already exist to begin\\n with.\\xa0 So for example, the way that the \\u2013 from what I understand I mean,\\n I\\u2019m definitely no developer or anything like that \\u2013 but from what I\\n understand, the building codes and laws like that there, kind of a top bottom\\n structure, right?\\xa0 So where if there\\u2019s some federal code that says,\\n \\u201cYou have to do this\\u201d, you know and if there\\u2019s a federal law that\\n says, \\u201cYour house has to have a smoke detector\\u201d, then the state obviously\\n has to inherit that and it kind of trickles its way down.\\xa0\\n\\n So by the time you actually get to the state level with this sort of thing, the\\n Texas State Building Code is already \\u2013 you\\u2019re talking about issues of\\n safety and things of that, these things are already so accounted for in my\\n opinion.\\xa0 Now you could obviously make things slightly more \\u2013 you can always\\n make things safer in a manner of speaking.\\xa0 You could always make things more\\n structurally sound by adding more material, or adding stronger material, or whatever\\n the case is, but of course there\\u2019s tremendous costs, and material costs, and\\n engineering costs that has to go into that.\\xa0\\n\\n So I take some initial issue with things like that because I think a lot of times,\\n people are like, \\u201coh, this makes it better\\u201d, and even in some of those"