I can understand that viewpoint. Here's the basic problem: The regulations are 100% subject to whatever appointed tyrant gets to run the municipality. I used to be an audiovisual and acoustical consultant. I helped design a $50m high school out in the boonies. The local inspector really wanted his local buddies to build that there $50m high school because boy howdy - 10% of a $250k audiovisual budget is a shit-ton of money! But they bid and not only were their prices completely out of whack but their bid proposals were so incompetently shitty that the entire design team recommended to the City that The Usual Suspects be hired to build the high school as Bubba, Gomer & Cletus LLC were clearly incapable of terminating an XLR cable. And things were all well and good until it came time for the local inspector to come out and sign off. And see - we'd put in an audio snake between the stage of the auditorium and the front of house position. As one does. And we used multipair snake cable. As one does. And we put it in conduit. As one does. And that conduit was in the slab. 100% by the book, absolutely in compliance with section 16xxx of the NEC, yadda yadda yadda. But the local inspector has the authority to interpret the code as he feels best suits the conditions. So the local inspector decided that since we were in slab, we needed direct burial cable. Which is the stuff you use for electric fences and shit. If you need to run a signal in a trench through dirt, and you have distances so ridiculous that you wouldn't put in conduit, you use direct burial cable. But we weren't even at grade. This particular slab was above a basement. But he's the local inspector. So rather than using a 1" diameter multipair audio cable In a run of 2" conduit We had to have our conduit jackhammered up and 40 runs of this shit put into the slab and then re-poured. That's not a problem of regulation. It's a problem of Mayberry Machiavellis with too little regulation to prevent them from interpreting regulations however suits their mood.
