Katrina construction played a major role in the expansion of steel-stud
construction (they use sheet metal in C or I sections) which can even be
CAD/CAM prefabbed. During WW2 Chinag Kai Shek mothballed his nvy in New
Orleans and since they were wooden, they brought over unusually aggressive
termites. THose termites have spread so much that south of Mason-Dixon you
can't insure new wood-stud construction. CHina has also had a building
boom. Ditto the Kemp-Cuomo subprime boom. We have had a lot of innovation,
but also there is a lot of room for mistakes when you do things in a hurry. I
have friends whose 1970s houses (in one of the five wealthiest zip codes in
the country) frighten me: leaking skylights which cook everyone in the
summer, plywood floors that keep needing more beams to keep from collapsing;
yet these houses continue to fetch astronomical prices. The worst asbestos
came about by government mandates and public works booms in the
1930s. Sheetrock was invented largely because of the GI Bill. The financial
crisis happened because people introduced too many new things without testing
them sufficiently. Edmunde Burke used to advocate making changes slowly
because you never know which thread you pull will disintegrate the entire
fabric. Such mistakes are inevitable, but I think instead of dropping our
guard when we are in a hurry, we should enhance it.

*+-At the time people were buying this drywall they just felt lucky to
*+-get any drywall from anywhere. It was right after Katrina and in the
*+-middle of a building boom that had already swallowed up all the
*+-drywall the US could produce.



- = -
Vasos Panagiotopoulos, Columbia'81+, Reagan, Mozart, Pindus, BioStrategist
http://www.panix.com/~vjp2/vasos.htm http://www.facebook.com/vasjpan2
---{Nothing herein constitutes advice. Everything fully disclaimed.}---
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