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> (often with a gross ignorance of the issues involved in hair care, beauty treatments, and hygiene). wait.. you seriously going to defend hairdresser regulati

> (often with a gross ignorance of the issues involved in hair care, beauty treatments, and hygiene). wait.. you seriously going to defend hairdresser regulations? Care to enlightenment me on why they are a net good for society? I always thought they are a punching bag for libertarians because they are such an obvious net negative for society...

dredmorbius 5y ago
Public-facing intimate-touch services carry numerous risks of hygiene, chemical exposure, techniques, identifying potentially hazardous conditions in the client, and more. I'm not going to argue that all regulations and licensing within the industry are sensible, that's simply never the case. And there is self-serving regulation for all the usual reasons (guilds, education, limiting competition and entry, all of which you can find in, oh, to pick a random example, the tech sector). But the case is also not nearly as black and white as Reason would like to have you believe. More generally, in my view, in any technology, the greatest elevation of knowledge and expertise comes not in applying the basics and in positive effects of the methods and systems involved, but in what I've called hygiene factors: the unintended consequences, side effects, complex interactions, and risks. The notion of manifest and latent functions was developed by sociologist Robert K. Merton.[1] In discussing these, Merton makes the perceptive observation that because latent functions are not immediately apparent, obvious, or significant, they represent a greater increment of knowledge and understanding than manifest functions, which are obvious, evident, easily understood and communicated, etc. TL;DR: there are nonevident hygiene and side-effect factors. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_and_latent_functions_and_dysfunctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_and_latent_functions_...

dredmorbius 5y ago

Public-facing intimate-touch services carry numerous risks of hygiene, chemical exposure, techniques, identifying potentially hazardous conditions in the client, and more. I'm not going to argue that all regulations and licensing within the industry are sensible, that's simply never the case. And there is self-serving regulation for all the usual reasons (guilds, education, limiting competition and entry, all of which you can find in, oh, to pick a random example, the tech sector). But the case is also not nearly as black and white as Reason would like to have you believe. More generally, in my view, in any technology, the greatest elevation of knowledge and expertise comes not in applying the basics and in positive effects of the methods and systems involved, but in what I've called hygiene factors: the unintended consequences, side effects, complex interactions, and risks. The notion of manifest and latent functions was developed by sociologist Robert K. Merton.[1] In discussing these, Merton makes the perceptive observation that because latent functions are not immediately apparent, obvious, or significant, they represent a greater increment of knowledge and understanding than manifest functions, which are obvious, evident, easily understood and communicated, etc. TL;DR: there are nonevident hygiene and side-effect factors. ________________________________ Notes: 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_and_latent_functions_and_dysfunctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_and_latent_functions_...