Yes, this is the free market fantasy. It does work in a lot of industries. Maybe it would work with barbershops too, though I expect it would make it change a lot. Chain barbershops would dominate the industry because people could trust the product coming from a professional and branded outfit. Barbers would become employees instead of sole-proprietors. Haircuts would be commoditized. It seems to be going that way anyway. I'm not really defending the way we do it now. It seems like a throwback to a more union-friendly era, when people could make a decent living in a blue-collar or service job.
That sort of thing is hard to even imagine now. Once, in this country, a man could work in a gas station and support a family and buy a house. We got so ****ed.
Orlando Authorities Battling the Scourge of Unlicensed Barbering Radley Balko | November 8, 2010 Thank goodness someone is getting these people off the streets. As many as 14 armed Orange County deputies, including narcotics agents, stormed Strictly Skillz barbershop during business hours on a Saturday in August, handcuffing barbers in front of customers during a busy back-to-school weekend. It was just one of a series of unprecedented raid-style inspections the Orange County Sheriff's Office recently conducted with a state regulating agency, targeting several predominantly black- and Hispanic-owned barbershops in the Pine Hills area. In "sweeps" on Aug. 21 and Sept. 17 targeting at least nine shops, deputies arrested 37 people — the majority charged with "barbering without a license," a misdemeanor that state records show only three other people have been jailed in Florida in the past 10 years. The operations were conducted without warrants, under the authority of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation inspectors, who can enter salons at will. Deputies said they found evidence of illegal activity, including guns, drugs and gambling. However, records show that during the two sweeps, and a smaller one in October, just three people were charged with anything other than a licensing violation. The "without warrants" part is probably key, here. The authorities clearly suspected that the shops are doing more than cutting hair. Barbers and witnesses at several shops told the Orlando Sentinel that deputies shouted and cursed during the raids, demanding the location of illegal drugs, which they searched for extensively. They never found more than misdemeanor amounts of mar1juana at eight of the nine shops they raided. The lone exception: Just Blaze on Semoran Boulevard in Apopka, where an arrest report shows deputies found Ski Joseph Vasquez, 40, with "2 baggies of cocaine in a prescription bottle" and cutting agents in the barbershop's office during the Sept. 17 sweep. Vasquez was arrested on drug- and gun-related charges after deputies said they found a handgun in his car. On the same day, deputies raided two other barbershops and found no illegal activity other than unlicensed barbering. By conducting the raids and searches under the guise of a regulatory inspection, they get around the need for a search warrant.
Lmao... How is somebody free to be a barber when they're forced to get a license to do so? Free to become criminals and be harassed by the government. The fact that the state forces people to get a license is what allowed this police abuse to occur. At least that's what the article seemed to say. Warrants weren't necessary because government officials were entitled by law to oversee these barbershops. All in all, the system the government has set up is immoral. And that isn't even considering the economic fallacy of it all.
It would be one thing if the license wasn't mandatory. If the license was just a way of showing the public that a particular business was trustworthy, I'd be all for it. However, the licensing isn't for the public's benefit; it's a way for the government to violate the proper rights of the people it governs, it's another form of economic protectionism, and another insidious tax on voluntary exchange. At least with voluntary licensing, people are still free to trade with each other on a voluntary basis. On another note, it would be an entirely different matter if we were talking about licensing people to drive. After all, the public owns the roads. In this case, the public doesn't own the barbershops, and it doesn't have any claim to the work that people voluntarily apply to their business.
Licensing creates a barrier to entry for employment, which eliminates competition and keeps prices artificially high. <object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7DS0XXFdyfI?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7DS0XXFdyfI?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>
Do you think we should do away then with all licensing? Basically anyone can call themselves an MD, a DDS and etc..?
This follows up on another debate but barbershops do operate in the public sphere and are thus subject to government regulation per the Commerce clause on a national level and per state laws on the local level. I am still curious though if you would be for doing away with all professional licensing.
The logic doesn't really get shaky as much as the risk-reward starts to lean more in regulation's favor. We live in a co-dependent society, like it or not, and having a healthy, educated populace benefits everybody. I'm all for the measures which promote such things, but there is a line to be drawn somewhere. Barbering is a close call. But hey, I cut my own hair anyway, so what do I care?
You're more patient than I am, as it has been increasingly difficult not to simply laugh at some of this. Carrying their (Libertarian) philosophy forward, do you trust the big drug companies to make safe products without FDA approval? That if a lot of people become ill and/or die, that no one will buy their products, letting the free market "work?" Where does it end?
y'alls crazy if you think the ol' hair cutting cartel's keeping those barbershop prices up. How much do you pay? The big chain co's pay their staff close to minimum wage. Staff pays for its own certifications. Ain't nobody getting rich cutting hair. And I'd be OK with a law banning older, balding men from sporting the comb-over pony tail.
So true, so true... I hate when things raise prices. If only there was no need to pay overtime. That raises the price on goods, because the companies can't force employees to work cheaply for 80 hours a week. You know what else raises the cost of food goods? Having to make sure that it's safe to eat. If people could just bottle milk on the verge of spoiling and sell that as well as meat products that might have a parasite here or there, think of all that wouldn't be wasted and how much cheaper those products would be? For that matter the cost of refigerating those items probably raises the price as well. I want things cheap! It doesn't matter if they are harmful, or not. They should just be allowed as long as it makes it cheaper.
Most, if not all should be eliminated. And barbershops do not operate in the 'public sphere'. Somebody allows you to enter their private property in order to conduct business. Frankly, I think that the right of individuals to voluntarily trade is much more important to the functioning of an economy than the government's ability to coerce those individuals into conducting trade according to the whims of economically-ignorant politicians. Anything could be considered public according to your overly broad definition.
Would it be impossible to have a private organization that gives a stamp of approval (like Underwriters Laboratories does with various things) which would certify that something (a drug for example) is safe, and not have the government involved? That would allow people to buy more experimental things if they wanted to take the risk, because no approval is required, but they could also play it safe and go for the tested products.
Except if Barbers didn't allow the public into their private property then they wouldn't have any business. We are having this debate in another thread but to rehash if you are dependent upon your the public to conduct business you are in the public sphere. Now I could just give haircuts only to my friends and in turn they pay me but once I unlock my door and put a sign on my window that says "OPEN FOR BUSINESS" I am in the public sphere.
Yes you could but what guarantee is there that something like that wouldn't be compromised in favor of the profit motive, such as given favorable ratings for pay? Granted that corruption happens in government but at least we have a vote. For that matter who would set up something like that and what if no private organization set up an organization like that? Lets say UL goes out of business what's to motivate private organizations from setting up another UL if they don't see the profit in it?
Impossible? Of course not, but desireable? No. The chances are considerable, in my opinion, that a private firm would be open to undue influence by drug companies who, having spent huge sums of money on what is really a bet, would attempt to affect their decision making regarding the new drugs. As someone who's own father was made very ill, developing cataracts, among other things, from a new medication that was assured by the company to be safe, assured to the FDA, but was later discovered to have lied about the results of their research and the resulting side effects, no, I don't trust them a bit. My own family doctor, the man I saw growing up for a cold, took the same medication my father took and died as a result. Many people took it and sued, including my father. That didn't help the dead physician, or help my father, who suffered from those side effects for years. Honestly, and I mean this with all due respect, I think you and some of the rest of you are being naive regarding the workings of the free market absent real regulation.
