What to do with contractors?

Building contractors are equvilent to used car salesmen. This is the shocking truth I had to learn the hard way. I bought a house, trusting that the builder used his years of experience to put up a well built, well designed home. What did I get? A lemon. The worst, cheapest components, poorly thought out construction, hidden problems, poping nails, poor attic ventilation, cracking foundation, inefficient design, cheap materials, poor duct woork, and the list goes on. Why is it like this? My guess is that rather than put another grand or two into better appliances and better materials, he would rather pocket the money and go on a cruise. After all, it is not his problem, the home owner is stuck with the bill to fix the furnace and ac blower motor twice in six months. The home owner is stuck with high utility bills, the homeower is stuck with popped nails. What am I going to do? Sell the house and let someone else deal with it. I'm going to build my own house so I get what I want. I don't think I will ever buy a house built by a cookie cutter home builder again.

How about some new oldies, geniuses!

There is a lot of talk these days about alternative energy sources, hybrid, hydrogen, and diesel cars.  The gas prices have been driving a lot of interest in vehical efficiency, gas taxes, oil company profits and all sorts of other things.  Two things I haven't heard talked about is telecommuniting and building energy efficient homes.

Doesn't it make a lot more sense to give tax credits to companies that let employee's telecommute at least 50% of the time than to give tax credits to people who buy trendy, overpriced, stop-gap technology cars?  Wouldn't it help the environment a lot more to get people off the roads?  Lets put taxs money into reducing traffic, pollution, road maitenence, and energy use rather than helping wealthy people buy trendy cars.

And another thing; why are homes so dang inefficient?  With a little thought our homes could be more comfortable, use less energy, blend into the environment better, and probably last a lot longer.  It probably costs 5-10% more, so it will never happen in cookie-cutter land.  I would pay more for a more efficient home, but I am sure I will have to build it myself.