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Everything Is Not OK
I went for a haircut today. Money is no object when it comes to my appearance – only the absolute finest will do. So I went to Sport Clips in the strip mall next to Target, with a $3 coupon in hand. Like many other fashion-conscious men, I frequent this establishment and don’t think I’ve ever had my hair cut by the same person twice. Like many other seemingly mundane things, this interests me. Well, most of the things that interest me actually are mundane, I suppose. But I’m fascinated by these young ladies. Who are they? Where do they come from? Where do they go? So I’ve applied for a federal grant to study attractive, rural, 30-year-old women who cut hair at gimmicky chain barber shops.
Well, actually, no – I just talk to them. And I learn a lot.
Kaitlyn (not her real name) just moved here from Georgia. Her husband is an auto mechanic. “He can fix anything with four wheels! Well, except my car – it runs like crap!” She went on at some length about how good he was at fixing things. His plan was to start his own shop once they moved here. They moved into a double-wide trailer that had a nice pole barn out back, which he planned to outfit with electric and a high-end air compressor, maybe even a grease pit, and start his own business.
He spent almost a year working on permits, licenses, inspections, and so on. He spoke to people from the county, city, state, feds, and the EPA. He talked to attorneys, accountants, and consultants to help wade through all the red tape. After about a year, he realized that the start-up costs were more than he was willing to gamble on the eventual success of a business that did not yet exist, so he got a job with the city, maintaining their trucks and mowing equipment. It doesn’t pay very well, but it has good benefits. It’s not a bad job, she says. Nothing to complain about. Everything is ok.
Kaitlyn did a great job on my hair, was very pleasant and personable, and is clearly very intelligent. She said that a few miles from their house, a barber recently retired. She considered buying his shop. She’s always dreamed of owning her own business. She said that’s the whole reason she went to cosmetology school. I said that sounded great – the shop is already set up, it has a large group of established customers, and she could expand from there.
She said that she spent several months looking into it, but she would need permits, licenses, inspections, and so on. I pointed out that it has been a barber’s shop for years, so the inspections, permits, and so on would already be done. She said that it would be a new business, and she would have to pay for all that to be done over again. She spoke with attorneys, accountants, and consultants to help wade through all the red tape – some of the same individuals that her husband had just consulted. She soon realized that the start-up costs were more than she was willing to gamble, so she got a job with a chain. The pay is not very good, and the benefits are lousy. One reason her husband took a government job was for the health insurance for their family. But she doesn’t mind working for Sport Clips – it’s a decent job, she says. Nothing to complain about. Everything is ok.
So how does this story end?
Well, in my view, it’s already ended. This young couple from a modest background has all the potential in the world. They’re both ambitious, intelligent, and very good at a valuable skill. They’re devoted to their family, their dreams, and each other. They dream of better things and are willing to gamble, willing to work hard today for a better tomorrow, and willing to take on the additional responsibilities that come with owning a business. They’re savvy enough with modern government to hire attorneys and consultants to help with the red tape.
And even they can’t open a new business, to do something they already know how to do.
And 30 years from now, nothing will have happened.
My Uncle Fred (Frederic Bastiat) described this as the seen versus the unseen. Progressives win elections because the benefits they provide are immediate and obvious. They give people free money with taxpayer dollars, or build highways with taxpayer dollars, or start new general assistance programs with taxpayer dollars. They’re working for you, and anyone with eyes can see it. The benefits provided by progressives are seen.
But the damage they cause is mostly unseen. In 30 years, Kaitlyn and her husband could have retired to a very nice community on the Gulf Coast and played golf for the rest of their lives. But they won’t. She’ll still be cutting hair for $12 an hour plus tips, and he’ll still be fixing lawn mowers for the city. Just like they are now.
They didn’t lose a fortune, because they never had the opportunity to earn one. Nothing happened. There they sit. And there they’ll stay.
Progressives may think they’re utopians who dream of a better tomorrow. But, in reality, they are the robotic defenders of the status quo. Everything stays the same because nothing happens. And when things don’t happen, those things don’t make the evening news. They didn’t happen at all, so there’s nothing to complain about. Everything is basically ok. And that’s the way it will stay.
Until it doesn’t.
Change is scary. You never know what might happen. It might be good. It might be bad. You roll the dice like this young couple tried to do. Twice.
Or you don’t. Like progressives do, every day.
I wonder if Kaitlyn views progressives as nice people who are trying to help her. Or if she views them as well-meaning fools, as I do when I’m trying to be charitable.
But in bed late at night, I wonder if she ever hates them for destroying her life and the lives of her children.
Probably not. Because nothing really happened. And nothing ever will.
There’s nothing to complain about.
Everything is ok.
I left her a $10 tip for a $15 haircut, and I walked out. I looked good – it really was a sharp haircut. But I felt like I wanted to puke.
Everything is not ok.
Published in General
Thank you for letting us know about actual people and what they experience. It is something to keep in mind.
I have until recently gone to independent barbers a couples miles from home for my haircuts. But they are gone now. One retired at age 80, and the other guy, who I think was a CPA on the side, is now a full-time accountant/inventory manager with a local manufacturer/distributor, and does a little barber work on the side, but only a few hours on Saturday. He seems to be doing well in his new job, so I’m not sure how long he will keep barbering at all.
Now I go 8 miles to the barbershop at the Meijer supermarket, where I seldom get anyone who has cut my hair before. There is another independent place a few miles even further away where my old barber used to work in the late 70s before he started his own business. Sometimes I take the extra effort to go there. The woman who owns it tells me that few men do barbershop work any more, because it doesn’t pay enough to support a family.
Over the past few years there has been a campaign in the WSJ to reform state licensing requirements. I’m against such reforms at the national level, though I’m sure things could be improved at state levels. But I’m against the feds sticking their nose in because I assume this will make it easier for the big national chains to take over all the barber business and drive the remaining independents and smaller ones out. Economies of scale work best where the rules are the same on a large scale, and when the economies of scale come into play, only the best-capitalized businesses will remain, with barbers making low wages and perhaps some of the management having decent jobs.
So if the woman who cut your hair finds it very difficult to start her own business now, just wait until there are uniform national regulations to deal with. The odds will be stacked even higher against her, and it will be harder than ever to compete with the big chains.
I didn’t know about Sports Clips, btw, but I looked online and learned there are some in Kalamazoo, Lansing, and Grand Rapids, but none here in Battle Creek.
She said that as long as she worked at Sport Clips, they paid for all the licensing fees and so on.
The compliance costs industry is huge and has tentacles in every other industry. It’s the real basis for the “Resistance.”
Just as a thought experiment: Imagine that a flat tax puts 80% of all the tax lawyers, accountants, advisers, etc. etc. out of work. What happens to them? And their job is intrinsically business friendly, relatively objective and aimed at helping people keep what they earn.
So imagine all the diversity ideologues and other SJWs from every
feralfederal, state, and local government, almost every school at all levels, every HR department suddenly unemployed. It’s easy if you try.I may be a dreamer, but in the real world this outcome would be a nightmare. Just for starters: many would not tend to support the political party that did it to them. It can’t be done slowly; the resistance would increase every year and the (R)s don’t have the stick-to-itiveness or stomach for the inevitable unpleasantness. It can’t be done fast; as much as we like to imagine it, we can’t end it rapidly without major social disruption.
My concern is that without some radical change, dependent on ideas or technologies yet unknown, this community of parasites will kill their host.
Probably something along the lines of “they have erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.”
That is an excellent point, Tabby. A person already in a situation (whether it is financial, romantic, whatever) may put up with it getting a little worse every year because they don’t want to start over again from scratch. A person on the outside looking in may weigh the costs and benefits and decide they are better off staying on the outside.
It would go something like this:
Dr. Bastiat nailed it. This has not been a free country in quite a long time. Starting a business is too hard. My grandmother came here with her parents from the Azores in 1901 at the age of two. As a teenager she started working and earned enough money to bring several relatives here and to Brazil to escape the oppression that was Portugal. She had her own business cleaning houses on Nantucket.
When was the last time you saw an independent house cleaner? You can’t do it. Workers of that sort have to work for a large company because no one can afford to hire them and risk not paying the taxes and other paperwork. Back in the 80’s the practice of employing housekeepers and nannies directly was killed off by politicians.
Lawn mowing services often employ illegal immigrants, I’m convinced, just to avoid the paperwork. Starting a business is just too hard. I no longer think it’s a coincidence.
We aren’t free. We are serfs. Bound to our work by student loans and onerous bureaucracy and regulations.
I thought it might be the progressive plan for us: “Make Regulations God Again”
Lol. That was my first thought.
It was no accident that Walmart was among the first to say they were okay with the onerous regulations and requirements of Obamacare. They could bear the cost, and they knew much of their competition could not.
The recent Supreme Court decision allowing states to charge Sales Taxes on out-of-state sales, even when the seller has no physical nexus in the state, will quite likely put a serious compliance burden on individuals and small businesses trying to sell on-line.
Great post!
We should also think about how the lemonade stand police kill young childrens’ incentive to make a buck here and there, or the health inspectors stopping church bake sales because none of the food was prepared in stainless steel kitchens.
I don’t know what the stats are, but I’m willing to bet more customers die from food prepared in government-inspected restaurants than from kids’ lemonade or church cakes.
I didn’t know things were so tough in South Carolina. (At first I was thinking the article said Georgia, and I was thinking The Dukes of Hazzard.)
In my part of rural Missouri, a person could build just about any shop where there is a doublewide manufactured home; most such homes have garages or agricultural-type buildings for this exact sort of thing or for storing farm equipment and similar necessities. I think the state government now has special requirements about installing septic tanks on parcels with less than 3 acres due to proper well water drinking concerns, but almost everything else goes. I remember one rural house I saw without a septic tank; the waste just ran down the Ozarks. Many such homes just use a local pond-type area. I don’t know than any rural county in this area has any zoning restrictions outside the city limits. Permits? I don’t think we have those around here unless you’re operating something like a quarry, and quarries are all over the place around here. One is next to a private local school. Perhaps the children wear masks, as I’ve seen the dust fly across the interstate some days.
I think you have to clock so many hours in school no matter the position in a salon, which includes learning about head and face muscles, chemicals, etc. and it’s always been that way. The ads for Sportsclips look like the old fashioned barber shops, where you get the steamed towel on your face etc. Funny those things are coming back when everyone is so freaked about gender and catering to men –
They could apprentice with people who own shops and learn the ropes or research partnerships so all the burdens aren’t on them. People are opening small business all the time.
Unfortunately for some of us, the eventual (natural) reduction of working media makes the conversations associated with these potentially valuable social interactions way too short to produce anything of reportable interest like you have done above. Thanks for the post. The Law…more accurately, the highlighted passages in my copy…is one of the most perused documents on my shelf.
Interestingly, at the same time, my doctor visits have gotten so frequent and much longer that I’ve had to add more than one entire office staff to my Christmas card list. For the record: some of them are just as interesting (in even more intimate settings) as the specialists at Sports Clips.
You really nailed it, Doc. A post with a beginning, middle, and end—that’s the way to do it. Along with human interest and a moral. You deserve all of those Likes.
You are the victim of 1) education malpractice and 2) unionized teachers.
Massachusetts Barber License Requirements…including 1000 hours of barber training.
For comparison, one can get a private pilot license with a minimum of 20 hours of flight training…typically would probably be more like 40 in practice. Assume another 20 hours of ground school to pass the written test, and you’re talking 60 total hours of instruction plus 10-20 hours of solo flight. So a total of 70-80 hours total instruction and supervised flight.
Add an instrument rating for 40 more hours of flight instruction/time and maybe 30 of ground school.
So, from a standing start, 150 hours training to become an instrument-rated pilot.
Off topic comment because my mind wanders: Why do casinos and their government pals call it “gaming” when the rest of the world calls it “gambling?”
The lobbyists for licensing are always the existing businesses who will be grandfathered in. The primary real purpose of licensing is to keep the newcomers out. Licensing is sold with the consumer protection argument, but it is never the real reason behind the push for licensing legislation.
Typical
Miss Barbie, probably because the industry wants to make it sound like you’re playing an innocent game, sorta like Monopoly, rather than gambling your money away. If I were a PR man for the industry, I’d call it Sexing.
In Michigan the requirement is 1800 hours.
If you choose to go to michiganbarberschool.org in Detroit, your tuition (including textbooks) will be about $11,000. Financial aid is available, presumably from a government program (aka corporate welfare).
I suspect that any move to substantially reduce or eliminate the licensing requirements would meet strong opposition from the barber colleges, barbershop chains and franchises, and current licensees, but I’m not sure just how strong the opposition from current licensees would be. It would be interesting to find out, but I don’t think the barbershop industry would pay for such research unless it knew it would like the results.
The only thing worse than this state of regulatory affairs would be for the feds to step in and make such state licensing requirements illegal.
I have been watching the counter on the likes for this excellent post climb higher than I have ever seen on Ricochet. As I am writing this comment, the count is at 90. That doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened before, but I haven’t seen any post go that high. Doubly surprising since it is a holiday weekend.
We’ve had lots of posts on the insidious cost of regulations in every industry, but this one is really standing out to Ricochet readers.
I wonder if the frustration with regulations is more acute right now because the economy is picking up, and there seems to be hope and opportunity for so many people yet here we all are with these crazy leg chains on.
Interesting.
Kaitlyn has learned nothing from the arc of history.
Top Five Reasons Kaitlyn Has Failed to Achieve The American Dream (3, ed.)
#3 She doesn’t understand government is simply a name for things we do together.
#2 She got married. To a man.
#1 She chose cosmetology over web design.
BONUS: Her parents did not name her Julia.
Back when I was building restaurants, I built a Ruby’s in Tallahassee. There was a barber shop across the corridor from where we were building the restaurant, with a cute lady barber. I got a little grubby one time, and got a shave and a haircut. Only time anyone else has ever shaved me. She said the straight razor was the reason for licensing barbers.
I took a peek over at the web site Freedom in the 50 States and clicked on the Occupational tab to see how the states ranked against each other. Some of the results were unsurprising, such as Maryland and California ranking the worst. But other results were quite surprising such as Minnesota being the 4th best, and Texas and Tennessee being far worse than Massachusetts and New York. On this issue, it doesn’t seem to matter whether a state is run by Democrats or Republicans.
The next time you are in need of a haircut, you may want to introduce the Kaitlyns to Dave Ramsey. He can help them, on *any* income, pay off debts, and save enough money to fund a business from the ground up. Starting a business is not every man’s right, as you know.
As a person who is vested in the young generation learning about entrepreneurship, I take this matter very seriously. My students, usually in middle and high school, habitually earn money by starting businesses, and the most earned was in the thousands.
As for the red tape, voting with your feet usually works as well. Move to a state that is friendly to small businesses.