5 ms·

And how many people bemoaning this situation in these comment threads will turn right around and advocate for more professional license requirements in some oth

And how many people bemoaning this situation in these comment threads will turn right around and advocate for more professional license requirements in some other comment thread. You can't have the good without the bad. I'd like to see those people come out and say these are acceptable losses.

philistine 5y ago
I think I'm the typical person you're inviting to say it and I will: those are acceptable losses. Whenever you want a new licensing scheme, you have to balance the gains with the losses. For example, my city had an issue where donation boxes would pop up on city lots next to parks and become dumpsters. The city implemented a licensing scheme, which forced the companies and non-profits to collect from the boxes at a regular frequency, and now the problem is solved. No bags of old books left soaking in the rain turning into useless pulp. But someone could argue the licensing scheme stops some non-profits from collecting much needed donations. It totally does, but it's worth it.
- II2II 5y ago
  It would also be nice if those who oppose licensing suggested credible alternatives. As your anecdote suggested, licenses are typically implemented for a reason. Quite often those reasons deal with people who are taking advantage of a situation, with little regard to the interests of others or even the legality of their actions. I will admit that licenses can be problematic, but I honestly cannot think of a good alternative so I support licensing as the best option we have available at present.
  - Aerroon 5y ago
    >It would also be nice if those who oppose licensing suggested credible alternatives. Credible alternative: don't have licenses. They're not a gift from god. Businesses existed before them and continue to exist without them. Can there be a quality problem? Sure, but consumer protection laws will apply regardless of licenses.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Don't have mandatory licenses. Voluntary licensing schemes seem to work well for the professions that have them. "Screw you I'm just not getting a license my work stands on it's own without your overpriced seal of approval" provides a nice backstop to rent seeking and other bad behavior by the licensing authority.
      - SiempreViernes 5y ago
        So just hoping the unlicensed companies putting out donation boxes without further maintenance don't attract any donations because the lack the license?
        brewdad 5y ago
        Send someone around to remove the boxes? You don't have to have a license but your box is illegal without one.
- coryrc 5y ago
  It's called "littering". Enforce your existing laws against people leaving crap on public property.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    Ah, so ban donation boxes altogether?
    - Gracana 5y ago
      No, the litter around it is.
  - srtjstjsj 5y ago
    Who is the litterer? The owner of the box or the person who put a shirt in it?
    - coryrc 5y ago
      Both.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  I am a bit confused. Why do you need a license to require organizations to pick up donations? Can't you just pass a law that requires it?
  - srtjstjsj 5y ago
    How will you enforce that law without a licensee's id # on the box?
    - _-david-_ 5y ago
      Businesses and charities already have a business license number. I am opposed to adding an additional license for something like this. If they use the existing number I wouldn't have an issue, but it sounded like there was an additional license that was required.
II2II 5y ago
It sounds like the people who issue licenses need a professional license! More seriously though: Rossmann's troubles are in the domain of business licenses, a licensing system that sounds too complex, staff that are not properly trained in the services they provide (or are incompetent for other reasons), and likely under-staffing in the departments he interacts with. My interpretation is this is more damning of the city itself than the principle of licensing.
- savant_penguin 5y ago
  As opposed to the other licenses such as the medallion system (Uber drivers clearly can do the job), the interstate commerce commission licenses (there are people without trucks who live off lending their licences), the insane regulations that make drug development cost billions (you need approval from gov every step of the way), the older aviation licensing ( your competitor aviation companies had to approve that there was a "public need" for your extra company to compete with them), the EMT licensing that does the exact same thing as the aviation companies got to do (you get to decide if there is a public need for the existence of your competitors, weirdly they never found the need for competition)? I'm sure the list goes on, but the notion that a govt worker who knows nothing about the practical side of the business and that does not care about how those insanities of the law will destroy jobs (this is the guy who will fine you) combined with an apathetic worker behind a desk with no incentive or reason to be responsive to you when they f up will make anything safer is just utopian. I just hope that people who run away from California and nyc realize that these policies just don't work. If you are in doubt about how much of the homelessness in California is the fault of the govt licenses/red tape just look up on YouTube how much bureaucracy you have to go through to build more housing. One guy had to wait 4 years and spend millions in lawyers just to get a no from the city council.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    Californian citizens have spent decades fighting tooth and nail to prevent any housing from being created, and have basically turned their local governments into anti-development walls, and pursued every private tactic available as well. But that isn’t an unforeseen problem with government so much as a problem with the government representing the actual wishes of their shitty residents.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
> advocate for more professional license requirements in some other comment thread. How in the world is this now a comment on the validity of licensing services? An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out? I know someone who was on hold with an airline for hours, should we dismantle airlines? Is notoriously impossible to get google on the phone, should we scrap search engines and online advertising? This post is simply looking for an reason to push a personal point.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  > An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out? In this instance, "customer service" is the entire point of licensing. You pay a fee and get the license. Here, Rossman paid his fee but didn't get his license because the government is inept. That's not just bad customer service, that's this government agency failing to do the thing it was created for.
  - nickff 5y ago
    Most government agencies fail to fulfill the stated reasons for their creation, yet the agencies endure. For example, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to forestall major economic cycles; subsequent depressions and recessions have had no negative impact on them.
hef19898 5y ago
Well, two different things can be true at the same time. Also, this seems less a problem with licenses and more a problem with getting and renewing them. Which are two related but different issues.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  How are they different issues? The problem with getting and renewing a license directly stems from the requirement to have licenses. It is an inevitable part of it.
  - mrzimmerman 5y ago
    It simply isn’t an inevitable part of it. There’s a chain of failures happening to Lois Rossman and the licensing board not picking up phone calls to take appointments is one of them and it’s in no way “inevitable”. By your logic if a service fails in a chain of services for a piece of software to work, we should call the failure an inevitable part of the system and throw the whole thing out. Complex things can have more points of failure. It seems like simplifying the renewal process here by removing or automating one or more steps is the sensible thing to do.
blueboo 5y ago
> You can't have the good without the bad This is not a rational claim. Yes, you certainly can have the good without the bad. The existence of a process doesn't imply its brokenness.
larossmann 5y ago
One important thing to note is that in the over 9 years I have held a DCA license for repair, they have never a) checked my soldering skills b) looked to see whether I got dust between the LCD cell & backlight layers when doing screen replacement c) checked to see what quality of iPhone screens we use for screen repairs d) asked or tested my ability to do my job You pay the troll toll, and you get a paper that goes on your wall. I could be the best tech in the world, or I could be a giant idiot... you'd never know. Some people have the mistaken impression that being licensed means I have been tested, inspected, etc.. nope. They inspect to make sure your business cards have your license number on them. They don't inspect to figure out if you actually do good work for your customers.
- srtjstjsj 5y ago
  The license gives customers a way to track your reputation.
  - syshum 5y ago
    The internet gives customers a way to track reputation, government adds zero value to that
  - larossmann 5y ago
    Yelp & Google do a far better job, and the way I feel about yelp is undisputedly bad. If you google portatronics 46th st, you will learn about the business way faster than if you show up in person, take down the license number, look up their license number, etc. Further, I have had angry customers leave bad reviews, file chargebacks, etc. Of all the customers I've had in the past 9 years with a DCA license, I had one go to the DCA over an issue they had with the post office that I quickly resolved with a full refund. This is one out of over 40,000 people in nine years, during COVID when the post office was being screwy with everything. My point is, this just doesn't happen anymore. but I've had TONS of people take grievences to google/yelp, and 99% of the time we give them a call, say mea culpa, ask what we can do to fix it, and work it out and it gets turned into a 5 star again. People who have a problem go to Yelp/Google to leave a review, or their credit card company for a chargeback. You won't find much related to the reputation of the business using the DCA because it's not the way this generation handles these issues. We've moved on from this system. It's a system designed to be useful for a pre-internet era, and exists solely so that the city can generate revenue. It's important to call a spade a spade.

philistine 5y ago

I think I'm the typical person you're inviting to say it and I will: those are acceptable losses. Whenever you want a new licensing scheme, you have to balance the gains with the losses. For example, my city had an issue where donation boxes would pop up on city lots next to parks and become dumpsters. The city implemented a licensing scheme, which forced the companies and non-profits to collect from the boxes at a regular frequency, and now the problem is solved. No bags of old books left soaking in the rain turning into useless pulp. But someone could argue the licensing scheme stops some non-profits from collecting much needed donations. It totally does, but it's worth it.

II2II 5y ago
It would also be nice if those who oppose licensing suggested credible alternatives. As your anecdote suggested, licenses are typically implemented for a reason. Quite often those reasons deal with people who are taking advantage of a situation, with little regard to the interests of others or even the legality of their actions. I will admit that licenses can be problematic, but I honestly cannot think of a good alternative so I support licensing as the best option we have available at present.
- Aerroon 5y ago
  >It would also be nice if those who oppose licensing suggested credible alternatives. Credible alternative: don't have licenses. They're not a gift from god. Businesses existed before them and continue to exist without them. Can there be a quality problem? Sure, but consumer protection laws will apply regardless of licenses.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Don't have mandatory licenses. Voluntary licensing schemes seem to work well for the professions that have them. "Screw you I'm just not getting a license my work stands on it's own without your overpriced seal of approval" provides a nice backstop to rent seeking and other bad behavior by the licensing authority.
    - SiempreViernes 5y ago
      So just hoping the unlicensed companies putting out donation boxes without further maintenance don't attract any donations because the lack the license?
      - brewdad 5y ago
        Send someone around to remove the boxes? You don't have to have a license but your box is illegal without one.
coryrc 5y ago
It's called "littering". Enforce your existing laws against people leaving crap on public property.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  Ah, so ban donation boxes altogether?
  - Gracana 5y ago
    No, the litter around it is.
- srtjstjsj 5y ago
  Who is the litterer? The owner of the box or the person who put a shirt in it?
  - coryrc 5y ago
    Both.
_-david-_ 5y ago
I am a bit confused. Why do you need a license to require organizations to pick up donations? Can't you just pass a law that requires it?
- srtjstjsj 5y ago
  How will you enforce that law without a licensee's id # on the box?
  - _-david-_ 5y ago
    Businesses and charities already have a business license number. I am opposed to adding an additional license for something like this. If they use the existing number I wouldn't have an issue, but it sounded like there was an additional license that was required.

II2II 5y ago

It sounds like the people who issue licenses need a professional license! More seriously though: Rossmann's troubles are in the domain of business licenses, a licensing system that sounds too complex, staff that are not properly trained in the services they provide (or are incompetent for other reasons), and likely under-staffing in the departments he interacts with. My interpretation is this is more damning of the city itself than the principle of licensing.

savant_penguin 5y ago
As opposed to the other licenses such as the medallion system (Uber drivers clearly can do the job), the interstate commerce commission licenses (there are people without trucks who live off lending their licences), the insane regulations that make drug development cost billions (you need approval from gov every step of the way), the older aviation licensing ( your competitor aviation companies had to approve that there was a "public need" for your extra company to compete with them), the EMT licensing that does the exact same thing as the aviation companies got to do (you get to decide if there is a public need for the existence of your competitors, weirdly they never found the need for competition)? I'm sure the list goes on, but the notion that a govt worker who knows nothing about the practical side of the business and that does not care about how those insanities of the law will destroy jobs (this is the guy who will fine you) combined with an apathetic worker behind a desk with no incentive or reason to be responsive to you when they f up will make anything safer is just utopian. I just hope that people who run away from California and nyc realize that these policies just don't work. If you are in doubt about how much of the homelessness in California is the fault of the govt licenses/red tape just look up on YouTube how much bureaucracy you have to go through to build more housing. One guy had to wait 4 years and spend millions in lawyers just to get a no from the city council.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  Californian citizens have spent decades fighting tooth and nail to prevent any housing from being created, and have basically turned their local governments into anti-development walls, and pursued every private tactic available as well. But that isn’t an unforeseen problem with government so much as a problem with the government representing the actual wishes of their shitty residents.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago

> advocate for more professional license requirements in some other comment thread. How in the world is this now a comment on the validity of licensing services? An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out? I know someone who was on hold with an airline for hours, should we dismantle airlines? Is notoriously impossible to get google on the phone, should we scrap search engines and online advertising? This post is simply looking for an reason to push a personal point.

dahfizz 5y ago
> An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out? In this instance, "customer service" is the entire point of licensing. You pay a fee and get the license. Here, Rossman paid his fee but didn't get his license because the government is inept. That's not just bad customer service, that's this government agency failing to do the thing it was created for.
- nickff 5y ago
  Most government agencies fail to fulfill the stated reasons for their creation, yet the agencies endure. For example, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to forestall major economic cycles; subsequent depressions and recessions have had no negative impact on them.

hef19898 5y ago

Well, two different things can be true at the same time. Also, this seems less a problem with licenses and more a problem with getting and renewing them. Which are two related but different issues.

Aerroon 5y ago
How are they different issues? The problem with getting and renewing a license directly stems from the requirement to have licenses. It is an inevitable part of it.
- mrzimmerman 5y ago
  It simply isn’t an inevitable part of it. There’s a chain of failures happening to Lois Rossman and the licensing board not picking up phone calls to take appointments is one of them and it’s in no way “inevitable”. By your logic if a service fails in a chain of services for a piece of software to work, we should call the failure an inevitable part of the system and throw the whole thing out. Complex things can have more points of failure. It seems like simplifying the renewal process here by removing or automating one or more steps is the sensible thing to do.

blueboo 5y ago

> You can't have the good without the bad This is not a rational claim. Yes, you certainly can have the good without the bad. The existence of a process doesn't imply its brokenness.

larossmann 5y ago

One important thing to note is that in the over 9 years I have held a DCA license for repair, they have never a) checked my soldering skills b) looked to see whether I got dust between the LCD cell & backlight layers when doing screen replacement c) checked to see what quality of iPhone screens we use for screen repairs d) asked or tested my ability to do my job You pay the troll toll, and you get a paper that goes on your wall. I could be the best tech in the world, or I could be a giant idiot... you'd never know. Some people have the mistaken impression that being licensed means I have been tested, inspected, etc.. nope. They inspect to make sure your business cards have your license number on them. They don't inspect to figure out if you actually do good work for your customers.

srtjstjsj 5y ago
The license gives customers a way to track your reputation.
- syshum 5y ago
  The internet gives customers a way to track reputation, government adds zero value to that
- larossmann 5y ago
  Yelp & Google do a far better job, and the way I feel about yelp is undisputedly bad. If you google portatronics 46th st, you will learn about the business way faster than if you show up in person, take down the license number, look up their license number, etc. Further, I have had angry customers leave bad reviews, file chargebacks, etc. Of all the customers I've had in the past 9 years with a DCA license, I had one go to the DCA over an issue they had with the post office that I quickly resolved with a full refund. This is one out of over 40,000 people in nine years, during COVID when the post office was being screwy with everything. My point is, this just doesn't happen anymore. but I've had TONS of people take grievences to google/yelp, and 99% of the time we give them a call, say mea culpa, ask what we can do to fix it, and work it out and it gets turned into a 5 star again. People who have a problem go to Yelp/Google to leave a review, or their credit card company for a chargeback. You won't find much related to the reputation of the business using the DCA because it's not the way this generation handles these issues. We've moved on from this system. It's a system designed to be useful for a pre-internet era, and exists solely so that the city can generate revenue. It's important to call a spade a spade.