That's an interesting thesis, but can you name one good building material that you can't actually use to build a house? People talk about regulation in the US like it's hindering any form of innovation, but there is surprisingly little terrible regulation that's actually enforced. Which is not to say you can't point to regulation that harms individuals but rather it's much harder to find things that harm society over the long term.
PS: Not to side track to situation; we are talking about building materials and you can use a wide range of things including straw and dirt in the US so what's missing?
> can you name one good building material that you can't actually use to build a house?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKH0qoaXR88 Discusses how building codes hinder new and "natural" building methods. In particular, the speaker mentions that older codes have failed to keep up with better techniques for strawbale building.
The deeper issue is not whether new materials can be used to meet code requirements, but whether new ideas of what constitutes a safe dwelling are allowed. Building codes are based on assumptions about what a dwelling should be like. For example, the floor should be relatively stiff. If a floor is too bouncy, it won't meet code even if it's strong enough to support the weight. Walls can't be too flimsy. The idea of a house that just safely collapses in a windstorm or floats away in a flood is, I suspect, outside of most building codes' conception of a safe building. The code focuses on the idea of a strong, permanent structure that will resist nature's forces. If houses were plants, the code would only recognize big trees. However, there are also grasses, which much cheaper to produce and also resistant to nature's forces in their own way (they bend). Yet building codes don't recognize structures that are inspired by grasses, only big immovable trees.
I don't know if grass-like houses are a good idea or not, but I'm sure that if we expand our thinking we can come up with better shelters. The problem is that it's hard to innovate and government regulation only tends to make it harder.
Houses are not websites when they fail people often die.
In that video he is trying to build long term structures and he complains not about the building codes, but the fact that there is no data to support the safety of new building ideas. The whole point of a building code is you get to avoid running the numbers, if you build a structure using these methods with these materials it's safe. There are rules for temporary structures like tents, but if you want it to last for 50 years you need to demonstrate it's safe. And, if he was capable of demonstrating he could build a safe house out of toothpicks and spit he could have done so because the only limit on his construction was providing number so an engineer could demonstrate the safety of the structure. And, the compromise of "build a load baring structure from well understood materials and fill it however you like" is vary open.
PS: Not to side track to situation; we are talking about building materials and you can use a wide range of things including straw and dirt in the US so what's missing?