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Barriers to Business – How cities can pave a path to entrepreneurship

• sdfhdhjdw3 4y ago
• sokoloff 4y ago
  I’m almost shocked that the $5.5K in fees figure isn’t much higher. I’d have guessed that it’d be closer to the San Francisco >$20K figure.
  • _uy6i 4y ago
    It’s $22k per the link
    • heretogetout 4y ago
      Yeah but they forgot to break it down. For other cities they lump in one-time-per-building costs into what is required to open a business, making the report misleading and dishonest at best. It'd be like including the cost of installing a fire door 100 years ago in the budget for every business that ever rents the building. > In Minneapolis, for example, many brick-and-mortar business owners must pay a fee associated with the impact their business will have on the sewer system; in the case of a restaurant, this fee reaches $8,275—bringing the total cost of legal permission to start a restaurant in Minneapolis to $13,973. I've yet to see a libertarian or libertarian-inspired article that did not heavily rely on dishonesty and this IJ report is no different.
      • sokoloff 4y ago
        It seems to me that if you’re reporting on “this is what it costs to open a business in this place”, that including the costs it takes to open a business in that place is fair game. Omitting costs that might or might not outlast your business seems at least as likely to be misleading or dishonest as including them.
        • heretogetout 4y ago
          All they needed to do to be honest (if that was their goal, questionable) was separate out costs associated with the business from costs associated with the building. They could still argue that the costs are too high for starting a restaurant on a bare concrete pad.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
• KoftaBob 4y ago
  One of the things I'm starting to notice from cases like this, is that it seems like the current state of things is: - State & local government is a preemptively over-regulated system, putting up tons of obstacles before you can get something accomplished. Examples: flurry of permits, NIMBYism, etc - Federal government is a retroactively under-regulated system, where the actual regulation occurs after some/much of the damage has already been done. Examples: regulation of antitrust/anti-competitive practices that come sometimes years after the acts began. In the 1st case, accomplishing beneficial things is too slow. In the 2nd case, preventing bad things is too slow.
  • Hermel 4y ago
    I would say both are over-regulated, but maybe not as overregulated as Europe. An interesting thing to note is that European countries tend to make rules to outlaw risky behavior in the first place, but have limited fines in case the risk materializes, whereas the United States tends to allow more risk taking, but imposes exorbitant fines if something goes wrong. Both systems have their advantages.
  • usrn 4y ago
    This is by design. Most of the laws are supposed to be state/local in the US and the federal government is only supposed to help coordinate/defend them.
  • pfdietz 4y ago
    There are those the law protects but does not bind, and those the law binds but does not protect.
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  I love studies like this. Giving people simple ways to understand where we currently are and where we need to be makes problem-solving much simpler. The goal should be to reduce friction by an order of magnitude. Shoot for a goal of 10 steps and $500 in fees.
  • djbebs 4y ago
    Shoot for 1 step and 0$ in fees.
    • dsr_ 4y ago
      That depends on what you think of as a step, and what you think of as fees. Is it one step if the single form for opening a restaurant is 200 pages? Is it zero fees if the fine for violating a health inspection is $10,000? The forms demonstrate that the new restaurateur has safe plans in place for traffic, seating, fire risk, equipment, food storage (dry, refrigerated and frozen), sanitation, and know the requirements for employment and training. If there's alcohol, there's licensing and training requirements. Are the kitchen floors both non-slip and impervious to water, with a proper drain? Are there arrangements for waste disposal, especially for used oils? I'm not even in the food business; I'm sure an expert can tell you much more.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      I don’t think fees should be $0, that would allow bot farms to start businesses. I’m wondering how different the world would have been if we had enforced a $0.01 cost for email…
      • ajmurmann 4y ago
        Bot farms starting businesses sins bad, but what bad thing would they actually do? The "worst" thing I can think of is the virtual assistant from Accelerando that forms the ideal form of operation for any mundane transaction its user is performing.
    • egberts1 4y ago
• cbetti 4y ago
  The high numbers here are eye-opening, but the article doesn't shed any light on the process. I'm left with the feeling that opening a restaurant is hard, but there is nothing to chew on in terms of improving the situation as a citizen or interested party.
  • KoftaBob 4y ago
    The full study that the article links to has a more in-depth look on the processes in several cities: https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Business-WEB-FINAL.pdf https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Busine...
    • redtexture 4y ago
      Many of the counted steps are required state wide, and not in the ambit of the municipality. State licensing processes for various Barbers, and so on. This is the state legislature's doing. Others are standard nationwide, and not going away: Setting up a corporation, or LLC for example. Or filing for a "doing business as" d/b/a name. I am unsympathetic to counting these as a step. I cannot get worked up about building permits. Here is why: This is a national regime, and most states operate under the "International Building Code", and similar Electrical and other codes, and the requirements there, for commercial structures are often based on factual risks and deaths from lack of proper construction. That means every building needs to be up to code when renovated in various categories: electrical, plumbing, heating/ventilation, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, fire code compliance, structurally, and more recently for energy code (typically insulation and heating/cooling related). These are essential for safety and health, and for economic well being in the long run. Yes these take capital. That can be 5 to 10 permits and inspections there, and those requirements are not going away, nationwide. There can be other municipal department participation for curb cuts, street access, sidewalk access and so on. Deal with it. Zoning is a municipal level, and that requires City Council and Planning Board participation, and not in control of the administrators operating the regulations. This is political level of regulation, and requires political effort to modify, typicall not in the ambit of administrators. Other "steps" in which all fees and taxes to a municipality need to be up to date are simply good practice. - No action if you are overdue on your real estate taxes, or have outstanding orders for compliance with health or building codes. That is mere enforcement of existing municipal regulations. Get up to date on all of your obligations.
• leblancfg 4y ago
  Agree with this push a hundred percent. I’d love to see numbers for Canada too, my suspicion is that it’s even worse. Starting a business here feels a lot like trying to cross the border in the game Papers Please. My buddy opened a small guitar pedal shop from his attic, and was promptly told by the city he was circumventing zoning regulations, and was eventually forced to find a spot in the “industrial” sector, even though he was a tiny operation. If politicians want to actually support small businesses and entrepreneurship, IMO auditing current bylaws and processes is the way to go. Edit: words
  • newsclues 4y ago
    Canada is regulated to death. My city is complaining about being forced to approve building permits in 2 months. Local government officials are using permits and regulations to limit the housing supply in a city with a housing affordability and homelessness crisis. The bureaucrats in charge all own homes…
  • plutonorm 4y ago
    They don't, as you are probably aware. They create barriers to entry for existing businesses that have the cash to issue bribes (or 'lobby' as some may euphemistically call it). This is one of the major reasons for the stagnation of all empires.
    • leblancfg 4y ago
      For sure, I guess I’m jaded enough that I felt it was so obvious as to not point out out. I still have some faith in possible change at the municipal level, at least in smaller ones.
    • tbran 4y ago
      Several years ago a hostel owner in Costa Rica was telling me about trying to get things done through the small city government for his business. After failing to get permits/licenses/whatever it was, someone told him he needed to give the city administrator some cash on the side for things to go through. Boom! Instant success! At the time of our talking, he'd accepted that paying bribes to the government (not what the locals called it) was just a regular part of doing business. It was astonishing that it was required, openly acknowledged/accepted by the locals, and pervasive through other government branches.
• m00dy 4y ago
  well, I don't want to get downvoted but I have to say...Blockchain fixes this.
  • honkdaddy 4y ago
    It seems like the problem here is government over-regulation, so unless businesses operating on the chain were exempt from normal laws, why would blockchain help?
  • dapids 4y ago
    How?
  • tomrod 4y ago
    A public facing append only database fixes this how?
  • dagw 4y ago
    If you don't want to get downvoted you are going to have to provide a lot more detail. Incredible claims require incredible evidence and all that.
  • moritonal 4y ago
    How? By blockchain do you mean the tech, or are you more referring to it's motif of anarchism?
  • BucketsMcG 4y ago
    Sorry, what? How does blockchain get your kitchen through its safety inspection, to choose just one example?
  • orangepurple 4y ago
    The men with guns in their hands that come to visit you don't care about your blockchain.
  • mackman 4y ago
    "But officer, you can't close me down... the blockchain says I took care of the rat infestation!"
• iandanforth 4y ago
  While I'm sure many will argue about government control vs entrepreneurial freedom, what fascinates me most is the inefficiency. Reading that it takes '77 steps' or '63 steps' or whatever doesn't bother me. My programs have thousands of steps, but the wall-clock step time makes them disappear. No it's the inefficient parts, in-person visits, lack of consolidation, processing delays. All the things that computers are supposed to have solved by now. I'd reframe this movement not as 'business vs government' but 'everyone vs inefficiency.'
  • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    If you can't afford (in terms of time as well as money) to put up with it you can screw right off. The city doesn't need or want your low buck development. Making the process inefficient raises the floor of the minimum viable business. And, more importantly, it raises the floor for who can start one so that you don't get people closing up shop and being bankrupt when something bad happens. The institutions designing these processes are chock f-ing full of people of questionable intentions. You hear "affordable prices" they hear "trashy clientele". You hear "thin margins" and they hear "can't afford to be taxed more than they currently are". You hear "small family owned business" and they hear "people who have no other assets we can threaten to lien in the case of a dispute". And just to be clear, these people aren't evil (well their actions are, but they're done with good intentions). It's just that the regulatory agencies they work for are set up in such a way that the 2nd and 3rd order "nice to push for but not technically within the scope of what we do here" opinions of all the people involved seep through. At its root this is a diversity problem. There aren't enough Ron Swansons and people who've been f-ed by government bureaucracies working for government bureaucracies so you get bureaucracies doing things that are completely and totally tone deaf. Edit: And before anyone puts any more words in my mouth, they have no intention of making the process onerous and exclusionary. They have just settled into that equilibrium over the centuries because that is the local maximum their crude "did our last round of changes do what we wanted or not" hill climbing algorithm has found.
    • iandanforth 4y ago
      I agree it's entirely possible that some bureaucracy is intended as a trial by fire. That said I think that is a tiny minority of the time. Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence. The people implementing these regulations don't have the time, resources, or expertise to create holistically efficient systems. Instead they can have meetings, write rules, have more meetings, vote on the rules, and then add another step to a process that assumes you go to an office and fill out a form because that's how it was done the first time someone had to come up with the permitting process. If I approach a rule maker and say "you're trying to over regulate!" then I'm challenging their raison d'etre without demonstrating understanding of their limited toolset. If, on the other hand, I say, "let me reduce your costs, save you time, and help you collect money faster" then (I believe) I'm going to have a better time. It's for that reason that I feel the "everyone vs inefficiency" argument is more likely to succeed.
• jt2190 4y ago
  If this resonates with you, Victor W. Hwang is also the founder of Right to Start https://www.righttostart.org/mission https://www.righttostart.org/mission > Right to Start fights to expand entrepreneurial opportunity for all. We drive civic change through: grassroots organizing and mobilizing, policy advocacy and engagement, and lifting the voices of entrepreneurs through media and storytelling. Our campaign is based in two affiliated nonprofits: Right to Start is a 501(c)3 and Right to Start Fund is a 501(c)4.
  • bestcoder69 4y ago
    The idea that entrepreneurs are marginalized in America might just be the funniest motivation for a non-profit I’ve ever seen. I was trying to think of a job that’s held up on a higher pedestal to make a follow-on joke (“yeah next we need a non-profit to glorify ___”) but even cops, soldiers, and movie stars have less of a halo on them than entrepreneurs.
    • pdeffebach 4y ago
      I think small businesses owners often treat their workers badly and are overall a reactionary force in American politics. But sympathy makes a bit of sense when you think about it economically. The businesses that do make it in have more market share and are selected to be those that are politically connected. The regulations serve to keep other businesses out, and we should try to help people that aren't as connected start businesses as well.
      • bestcoder69 4y ago
        > The regulations serve to keep other businesses out, and we should try to help people that aren't as connected start businesses as well. If we're talking about pure regulatory capture, fine. But the only concrete examples I ever hear about ones like "small businesses can't afford to pay for health insurance" w/r/t the ACA. To put my cards on the table, though, I'm not pro-regulation for regulation's sake. I'm more of a "skip the middlemen and just do it through the State, and no one needs to 'regulate' anyone - I can just regulate them myself w/ my vote (and my dollar, if it's a state-owned-enterprise)" guy. But if my quality of life is 100% controlled by disconnected, self-interested private owners who don't care what I have to say, I need the government to come in and at least give me a freedom or two to leverage against them...please.
• dsr_ 4y ago
  Remember that the fees get approved by people who ran on "small efficient government must pay for itself" platforms.
  • Turing_Machine 4y ago
    In Boston and San Francisco? I don't think so, dude.
• rosmax_1337 4y ago
  Death by bureaucracy. This is a sign of an extermely sick society.
  • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. Opening an above the table business in Boston has been onerous since 1630. The micormangerial jerks you need to get permission from happen to have moved their office from the church to the cube farm over the centuries.
• floor_ 4y ago
  OOF. Starting a software business in Indiana only cost me $90 with 0 visits and I recall maybe 2 forms to fill out.
  • Octoth0rpe 4y ago
    It's likely similar for a software business in Boston as well. It's really the restaurant part that is so brutal.
  • dsr_ 4y ago
    How many people could you make sick by serving them spoiled software? And perhaps Indiana should have more regulation for software businesses that do have safety implications.
    • floor_ 4y ago
      You've never seem my code. hah
    • theandrewbailey 4y ago
      > How many people could you make sick by serving them spoiled software? In the classic case, at least 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
    • Turing_Machine 4y ago
      People have, in fact, been killed by bad software. Many more have been injured or financially ruined by it.
• mrfusion 4y ago
  Whatever happened to “Hey, I have some apples, would you like to buy them?” “Yes, thank you!” That’s as complicated as it should be to open a business in this country. - Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation
  • EnKopVand 4y ago
    Well… The farmer used sewage water to grow the apples. Then the processing factory hollowed out the apples to make juice. The sales company filled the hole with lead. The restaurant bought the cheap lead apples and then painted them red because red apples get eaten faster. Then someone died and the outraged public demanded regulation.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      That is against the law, you shouldn’t have to prove you aren’t selling poison apples to start a business. Let investigators arrest/fine those breaking the law.
      • vegardx 4y ago
        But me, as a consumer, want you to have to prove to someone that you're not selling me poisonous apples. That it gets investigated and people are punished or fined doesn't make me any less dead.
      • bestcoder69 4y ago
        I love eating non-poisoned apples. If you want to try your system where apples are a gamble (buyer beware! it’s your responsibility to test your apples for poison before consuming them!), then please try that social experiment somewhere far away from me. I’ve got enough shit to deal with.
        • briandear 4y ago
          Then how about someone else starting a company that tests apples. Demand for “clean” apples would result in demand for independent testing companies to certify that the apples are good. Without the seal, consumers would choose competitors that have tested their apples. The testing company has an incentive to be accurate because if one of their certified apple producers gets people sick, then that certification becomes useless and thus causing the company to lose all their business. This isn’t that hard. And besides, what’s the incentive for a government agency to care about apple safety? Tons of examples over the years when regulators approved dubious things (a long list of pharmaceuticals that turned out to be deadly for instance.) Rather than being shut down, those regulators get even bigger budgets. And the myth that the bureaucracy is accountable to the people needs to stop. Ever been to the DMV? Despite being universally hated for inefficiency, that place is still inefficient. How is the DMV accountable to anyone?
• mindvirus 4y ago
  I bet someone could make a solid SaaS business around streamlining this. Hard part would be recurring revenue, but I would bet there's a compliance play for long term revenue.
  • jcalabro 4y ago
    I'm not sure there's coverage for all the specific work of opening restaurants, but Stripe Atlas [0] is one offering that exists for this purpose. There's also LegalZoom [1]. [0] https://stripe.com/atlas https://stripe.com/atlas [1] https://www.legalzoom.com/ https://www.legalzoom.com/
  • stewx 4y ago
    Wouldn't the world be a much better place if we solved the problem rather than finding an angle to monetize it?
    • mindvirus 4y ago
      Maybe, but it's not always possible or straightforward. It's probably a much lower bar to streamline it like this. Fixing the system is often an uphill battle. Maybe existing restaurants will fight against it, cities need the revenue from it, it's a complex mix of federal, state and city laws, etc.
  • hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
    I'd be surprised if there is no company running such a business, probably a more traditional one, not an SaaS one. At least in China I know there are companies that run business taking care of registration (and other chores) of new companies. It may take months if you don't use their service, but maybe merely a couple of weeks if you do.
• cute_boi 4y ago
  As always Bureaucracy sucks. As long as bureaucrats earn these money in name of forms etc. will anyone dare to challenge the system? In my country, the system is so atrocious. For small things like Bank statement they require people to go to lawyers for notary etc.. And, due to such bureaucracy corruption also increased because there is a risk that if we don't feed malfeasant officer they might become hindrance.
  • lbriner 4y ago
    Bureaucracy is terrible but the only other mainstream option is based on trust and people have a habit of abusing it. What alternatives? Someone visits the restaurant and says, "yeah that all looks OK"? Then they take a bribe and the system breaks again. At least a paper trail provides some history and ability to audit certain things, blacklist owners who posioned their customers, make sure they are paying their fees to pay for the inspections etc.
• roenxi 4y ago
  These points of friction are so frustratingly stupid. Successful businesses are rare and delicate things. Every small fee is going to be some genius deciding to stay at their desk job and just take a salary rather than creating a couple of million dollars of value for their community. And the reasons for all this regulation are fundamentally weak. Regulators tend towards taking no risks. Small businesses are the part of society that are most useful when they experiment and ... take big risks. If the risk is removed, in 20 years there will be a lot less reward than would otherwise have been the case. But to be realistic about the costs - these regulations were probably put in place because of things like like food poisoning or people getting crushed to death in warehouses. There would be real downsides to removing them. But the crux of the issue is (as can be seen in Asia) it is possible to get economic miracles and build up entire new industries propelling people into a future they did not see coming through steady investment in new industries. People are way underestimating the damage that locking in the status-quo does during this era of miracles. Triggering big economic improvements is worth a lot more than a futile exercise in causing no harm. It is impossible to do no harm, and so these regulations will fail to really achieve their goals while setting communities up for less success in the medium term. Capitalists routinely wipe the floor with people who don't take enough risk. Risk is necessary to get the best outcomes. Where will the risk taking happen if people try to regulate it out of existence?
  • praestigiare 4y ago
    This is a strawman argument. The point of regulation is not to prevent all harm, it is to prevent the worst harms. I see no evidence that allowing the possibility of the worst outcomes is necessary to achieve the best outcomes. For every foodborne illness prevented or permanent disability from an on the job accident avoided, the community saves a couple million dollars. If you want less friction, then fund the regulators. We slash city budgets and then wonder why health departments rely on fees and inspectors take weeks.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • MagnumOpus 4y ago
    > Every small fee is going to be some genius deciding to stay at their desk job and just take a salary rather than creating a couple of million dollars of value for their community. I feel you are being dogmatic here rather than evidence based. The markets for restaurants in a given neighbourhood is rather static - and roughly zero-sum in terms of earnings, but _not_ in terms of quality. If you encourage some "fragile genius" who can't follow instructions for fire safety, food hygiene, payroll accounting or plumbing to open a restaurant, you will a vibrant mix of more unsafe restaurants, unhygienic food, unpaid employees and clogged sewers, all of which are a burden on the rest of society.
• patchtopic 4y ago
  I bet there was a fraction of this wasteful paperwork for that place in Thailand where I got laid up with food poisoning for weeks.
  • yostrovs 4y ago
    • allmodelsRwrong 4y ago
  • aaa_aaa 4y ago
    Food poisoning usually does not have much relation with opening a business. Most government regulations are just for illusion of safety, and gate keeping.
    • sofixa 4y ago
      Citation needed. There's this saying, "safety regulations are written in blood". The vast majority of regulations are written reactively, after something went wrong. (US regulations forcing minimum lot, yard, house sizes are notable exceptions). Especially for something as a restaurant, where 1) people eat, so hygiene and etc. is important; 2) people will work; 3) people will visit, so you needs lots of insurance, health, fire etc. checks and OKs.
• Symmetry 4y ago
  Reminds me of the book The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto which was a look at how in many countries capitalism only exists for the rich while the poor, without social connections and bribe money, don't have access to things like enforceable contracts, official property that could be used as collateral for loans, etc. One eye opening bit was when he had grad students in various countries try to register a new business without paying any bribes and he measured how many steps, days, forms, etc it took.
  • Symmetry 4y ago
    I'd also say that while this is a major problem and ought to be fixed, streamlining the process from the perspective of the people applying is probably going to require both political will and spending more on city administration.
• joosters 4y ago
  Obviously 92 steps is a lot, but if you want to improve the situation, it's no use just saying "this is terrible, make it simpler!", you need to consider: - Which steps are unnecessary? Unless you have the view that the bureaucracy is just designed to be hellish, you need to figure out what each step is trying to achieve, and what would be lost if it were removed. - Can steps/agencies be merged? If there are nine government agencies involved, you could simplify the procedure by moving the responsibilities to fewer agencies. But there are limits... at the extreme, if you made just one government agency responsible for restaurants, you'd make opening a restaurant easier, but - congratulations! - you've effectively just created a new government agency for restaurants. Now you've added to the bureaucracy!
  • realityking 4y ago
    Your second point reminded me of an interesting different between US government services and German government services. Not for businesses but for individuals. Here we have, since the 1980, “peoples offices”, either run buy the municipality or the county (never both) to address most common in-person government interactions for folks. This allows not only consolidating multiple interactions in one visit but also increases the geographic density of the offices as they have a lot more visitors. The services they offer range from registering your apartment (doubles as voter registration), getting IDs, passport, and driver licenses, changing the registration of your car, getting proof of (the absence) of your criminal record. For many of these services, they have delegated or assigned authority from whatever government agency is responsible while for some they merely operate as a service center. I wish more of this could be done online, but it’s certainly nice I don’t have to go to 15 different places to do all of that.
    • HWR_14 4y ago
      > it’s certainly nice I don’t have to go to 15 different places to do all of that. How many times have you had to do more than one of those things in the same visit?
      • realityking 4y ago
• bluedino 4y ago
  I'm amazed at how many underground food businesses there are in my area. People advertise all kind of meals on Facebook, they only take cash app, and you can have it delivered or go pick it up (at someone's house, of course). They only make food on certain days, some do meals while other do desserts...
  • throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    These businesses are underground because the regulatory burden of being over the table makes them either impossible to start because of upfront costs vs future profit or impossible to to keep viable because of recurring costs. Nobody "wants" to run an under the table business and have their income be subject to the whims of enforcement but the other option is just so bad it's the lesser evil.
    • blitzar 4y ago
      > Nobody "wants" to run an under the table business Cash in hand no tax. Plenty of people want to earn that, and plenty of people want to pay no sales tax.
  • ahmadss 4y ago
    I run a microbakery on the side (https://www.instagram.com/stoneleigh.microbakery/ https://www.instagram.com/stoneleigh.microbakery/) and my local government knows nothing about this operation. That said, I only sell to friends and neighbors bc if somehow my bread gets spoiled (highly unlikely, unless its focaccia and they leave it out for 2 days), I can resolve it directly with them and not have to deal w the health department.
• micromacrofoot 4y ago
  Boston has a lot of restaurants, so what would it be like without this process?
  • mhb 4y ago
    More variety, lower cost.
    • micromacrofoot 4y ago
      How so? Rent is the primary driver of cost (much higher than the fees) and there's already a fairly wide variety by US standards. I guess to frame it a different way, is there a major city in the US that doesn't have the bureaucracy, and also has a better restaurant scene?
      • mhb 4y ago
        It seems tautological that lowering the entry barrier would encourage more variety and lower cost. Why limit the possibilities to just the US? Why not look at street food in Thailand or Singapore? Isn't it unlikely that the current status quo is the ideal balance between safety and exploration?
        • micromacrofoot 4y ago
          I'm not sure how familiar you are with street food in Thailand, but food poisoning is so common that there are hundreds of "how to avoid food poisoning in Thailand" guides. I don't agree that it's tautological. One-time paperwork fees are a small price compared to retail leases and build-out costs in a major city. You're probably looking to spend in the area of $500k to get started. An annual lease might be in the area of $50k for a small restaurant. For your first year paperwork is probably 5% of your total costs. Passing that on to the consumer is maybe a few cents per dollar.
• QuarterReptile 4y ago
  For anyone getting walking voluntarily into a bureaucratic labyrinth like this, I highly encourage documenting the whole sequence so you don't get lost in the middle of it. With something distasteful like this value-destroying sequence of waits and applications and meetings, it's reasonable to try to hold it at arm's length and minimize the time you voluntarily commit, but these things will eat you alive if you let them go that way.
• bigmattystyles 4y ago
  Maybe I'm jaded but 5k (or even the 22k in the article for SF) doesn't seem that bad to me. In 2016, I did a kitchen remodel in my CA townhome and the permit costs, which included a city inspector coming over for 20 minutes cost 3.5k. For context, I paid the licensed contractor 10k for labor. If taxes are low, expect fees I guess.
  • sofixa 4y ago
    Yep. I especially found the article's complaint that a starting business might not have that much money saved weird... If a business cannot afford 5k to register, how will it stay afloat?
  • theandrewbailey 4y ago
    How did paying the city $3,500 help you?
    • bigmattystyles 4y ago
      Safe and permitted work - and if I ever decide to sell the house or have to file an insurance claim, I can show the work was approved and permitted.
      • theandrewbailey 4y ago
        You don't need to be permitted to install an app on your laptop or phone (despite big tech's wishes), neither should you need it to install a new kitchen in your house. In a reasonable world, if the contractor is licensed (as you state), that should be all you need for insurance and selling the house. If the work isn't safe, you go after the contractor, maybe with a lawyer. Government shouldn't intervene in each individual job.
• 127 4y ago
  92 jobs for each step, 22 jobs for each form, 17 jobs for each office visit, $5,554 into the government coffers. Each step can be sold by some politician as some kind of a win for their campaign. Each of these people will fight hard to hold onto their position. Is this productive work? Maybe a very small minority of it, when you take into account how much it holds entrepreneurship back.
• matthewmacleod 4y ago
  I expect this kind of thing will be red meat to some people, and we can all agree that pointless bureaucracy is bad – particularly where stifling competition is the goal. IMO the effort of any campaign versus bureaucracy is best spent on reducing the friction of governance, particularly for small entrepreneurs: digitalising processes, publishing clear guides, harmonising rules, establishing guaranteed response times, adding exemptions for small businesses etc. Too often there's a reflexive "bonfire of the red tape" view – in contrast, I'd say it's actually pretty good that restaurant businesses have to e.g. demonstrate that they meet hygiene standards, produce a fire safety plan etc. and we probably don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. For all its faults, look to the UK for a relatively balanced approach to regulation of this sort.
• mrtksn 4y ago
  Okay, so what are those 92 steps, 22 form in 17 office visits? The article lack any substance and it is pure activist piece, unfortunately. There's this story about the extremely heavy and complicated French labor laws. The story goes, businesspeople complain that the law is more than a hundred pages long booklet and as a response the French legislators print the booklet in smaller font, thus successfully taking the laws under 100 pages. It's supposed to show the ridiculousness of the bureaucracy but IMHO it's pretty fair to solve the problem by using smaller font if the complaint is about the number of pages. Maybe we can have more intelligent discussion if we actually know the context and the content. I suspect that some of those steps, fees and forms are reasonable and some are outdated and only exist because the law was made pre-internet, pre-smartphone era.
  • Goronmon 4y ago
    The first link in the article is to a PDF that covers the issue with much more specific information. https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Business-WEB-FINAL.pdf https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Busine...
    • mrtksn 4y ago
      I skimmed the linked document and I didn't see the actual steps, did I miss those? Can you give me a page? There are again tables about number of steps etc. I find that ridiculous. It would be funny if the regulators respond by combining the steps though. Instead of 1. book sanitary checks 2. pay sanitary check fees, maybe it can be solved in one quick step of 1. booking sanitary checks and pay check fees
      • acomjean 4y ago
        There is a sort of state by state summary at the end, about all the forms they had to fill in. Boston's is on 98. They're not counted specifically, but general steps. It seems counter intutive but adding another agency (the "start a business" agency) might help. That group will get fed up with the process and since they're doing it repeatably they can see the issuses and perhaps force a fix. Most people go through this process once and there is little incentive to fix. (I had to go to the historical commision to get new windows a 2 month process.. it was a pain, but now I'm done I've never revisited)
• egberts1 4y ago
  Hey, it’s how to keep the government alive, why knock it? Perhaps it is because when more than 10%-ish of economy is sapped for goverance overhead, it generally starts to suffer … badly.
• quickthrower2 4y ago
  A startup needs to disrupt this!
  • leblancfg 4y ago
    There used to be one called Intuit. I don’t particularly like that they’re essentially lobbying to keep tax laws and processes complicated. The root cause is at the political level — at all three levels.
• gadders 4y ago
  I remember reading a biography of a Navy Seal (possibly Rob O'Neil) and he tells about when he and his team were gearing up for a mission and choosing their kit and he described something called the "good idea fairy". Some senior person would come along and suggesting add a particular piece of kit as it was a "good idea", then another senior manager would suggest something else and on and on it would go until they would have so much kit to carry they wouldn't be able to carry out the mission. I think the layering on of each for or step is a bureaucratic version of the Good Idea Fairy.
• jriot 4y ago
  There is an excellent book a Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital, that discusses these issues. He has a chapter on the number of steps it takes to open a business in Hati and Singapore (if memory serves me correctly). Hati requires thousands of steps and if done correctly 17 years to open a business legally. Singapore take a few steps and less that a week to open a business legally. This has broder implications to property rights and if countries prosper.
• bestcoder69 4y ago
  1) “In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'” 2) Maybe govts should waive the fees in favor of taking equity as payment. e: And a broader point: there are many more options for removing barriers than removing the regulations themselves. So, this focus on the regulations themselves is fishy. We could fund them with taxes, put businesses on payment plans, and most importantly, consolidate this administrative work (e.g. this is unrealistic, but imagine the efficiencies you could find, regulating all businesses in the US at the federal level. You might be able to get it all done with 1 form!) 3) Currently, being born into this mortal coil has burdensome[0] startup costs of >= $HospitalBill. I’d be down with achieving _that_ Right to Start. [0] Souls sitting in Earth’s pre-game lobby remain there when their investors (parents) don’t have the capital to front them :-(
• graycat 4y ago
  The OP starts to make clear why my home cooking is so much cheaper than restaurant food: The ingredients in my version of pizza cost less than $1 per pizza. For pork BBQ, that's about 25 cents per ounce, final, cooked, lean, ready to eat, with a meaty sandwich having 3 ounces. So, I save on the money that otherwise has to go to paper shuffling, city bureaucrats, likely also lawyers, etc., all before hiring any workers to get the food ready for customers. I like to think of current progress in computing and the Internet technology as keys to greater economic productivity, but tough to see easy applications of this technology to the context of the OP, other restaurants, many small businesses, etc.
  • tzs 4y ago
    > So, I save on the money that otherwise has to go to paper shuffling, city bureaucrats, likely also lawyers, etc., all before hiring any workers to get the food ready for customers. Those costs to start up the restaurant add almost nothing to the cost of your pizza. What makes a restaurant pizza cost so much more than your home made pizza is the restaurant's ongoing costs, such as rent, wages and benefits, utilities, insurance, advertising, delivery, and many I've probably left out. Doing a bit of Googling, I get that Domino's averages around 100 pizzas per restaurant per day. When I've went there there are typically maybe 3 employees visible plus drivers coming and going. Let's call it the equivalent of 5 employees at any given time. They are open 14 hours a day. If they are just paying Federal minimum wage that's a tad over $500/day in wages. That's $5/pizza right there. More Googling tells me that the rent for an average sized restaurant in the US is about $5000/month, which would be about $160 per day, but a Domino's doesn't need as much space so let's call it $100/day. There's another $1/pizza. That was assuming they are in one of the 15 states where the minimum wage is just the Federal minimum, and that rent was about average. I'd guess most on HN are in states with a higher minimum wage and higher rents.
    • graycat 4y ago
      Right. I didn't say, suggest, or believe that the extra cost of restaurant food was due just or mostly to the initial, one-time costs of the startup. Instead I wrote > all before hiring any workers to get the food ready for customers. So, those are the on-going costs you illustrated. Also my main lament and summary remark was quite general covering both times and categories of small businesses: > I like to think of current progress in computing and the Internet technology as keys to greater economic productivity, but tough to see easy applications of this technology to the context of the OP, other restaurants, many small businesses, etc. Sure, small gains in "economic productivity" are visible, so I would revise that lament to "tough to see the desired big gains ...."
• sheeshkebab 4y ago
  It better be time and money consuming opening a place with public health implications.
• captainmuon 4y ago
  I mean, that sounds bad, but that report is from a libertarian organisation with an agenda, so they have a reason to paint it in a bad light. I wonder how many of these steps are incidental, and how many are really justified. If I think about what it would take to open a restaurant here in Germany (a country which also has a reputation for bureaucracy to be fair) I think there are a lot of unavoidable steps: Register a business, register with the chamber of commerce, and the tax office. Maybe also with town hall. Check if the restaurant is in accordance with the development plan. Apply for any exemptions/licenses if needed. You need certifications from the health department. You need to take steps to proove you don't have unreported employees. There are fire safety checks. You need toilets, but fortunately not parking spots (usually). And this is just scratching the surface. But I think, unfortunately, many of these make sense and are unavoidable. And honestly, you can get help for many steps, and the time and money expended is not too big compared with, I don't know, the current rent for a restaurant in a good location.
• quadrifoliate 4y ago
  I had a long quote here, but the report linked in the article [1] answers a lot of my gripes with the article itself. The five categories of businesses they are focused on are: - Restaurants - Retail bookstores - Food trucks - Barbershops - Home-based tutoring ---------------------------------------- [1] https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Business-WEB-FINAL.pdf https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Busine...
• cm2187 4y ago
  It requires a license to be a barber but not a software developer…
  • macinjosh 4y ago
    Neither should require a license...
    • Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      In general, the chances of you making someone sick or injured by developing software is very, very low indeed. An unclean barber can spread lice and other diseases if they are unclean, not to mention that they are using sharp tools near someone's head ... or a razorblade on someone's face. Do you want to trust that you'll not catch diseases or other things from the barber or would you rather be able to have some sort of license? If you'd rather take the risk, so be it. I'd rather not.
• nonameiguess 4y ago
  I'm not gonna sit here and say the process and expense is at least some theoretical optimal level everywhere that exactly balances public interest with whatever benefits accrue to society from having more restaurants with lower barrier to entry, but this article is presupposing the point with "excessive." That is hard to quantify. It's not like there is no reason for these things. I actually helped a friend open a restaurant in Long Beach, CA a few decades back and among the reasons for the expense: - You're serving food, so there has to be some check that you're procuring food that isn't spoiled and you're properly storing and preparing it - Anything communally served (i.e. buffet style) needs to have safeguards in place to ensure you're not creating disease vectors - You're generating a bunch of biological waste and need to dispose of that properly - The cooking process puts out a bunch of waste grease that needs to be trapped and kept out of the normal water disposal system so you're not clogging everyone else's pipes - A kitchen is quite obviously a fire hazard and needs to comply with codes preventing fires - If you're not providing your own parking lot, your customers are going to be parking on the street and someone needs to pay for that additional congestion to prevent externalities There is no way to automate the inspection process, so humans need to do it, and I'm not gonna say these are super high-skill jobs, but code inspectors still need to be paid. What other way is there to do this except paying upfront before you have revenue? So again, maybe this exact number of steps is excessive, maybe the in-person visits are excessive, maybe the expense is excessive, but simply enumerating them doesn't demonstrate that. What are the steps? What is on the forms? What is the purpose of these visits? How are these fees being spent?
• wolframhempel 4y ago
  I think there is a fundamental misalignment of incentives between the government and its citizens. Governments as an abstract entity might have an interest in thriving entrepreneurship and economic growth, but the individual bureaucrats they employ do not. And its those Bureaucrats that design and apply processes. As a result, most western countries now have an ever growing apparatus of bureaucrats who are not accountable to the citizenship and who's sole reason for being is the facilitation of process. In order to increase their relevance and hence influence and paygrade, it is in their best interest to increase the amount of process and the role that process plays in everyday decision making. What worries me is that I don't see any remedy to this. Germany, a particularly bad offender when it comes to process and red tape has been attempting "Bürokratieabbau" - bureaucracy reduction since 1997. As a result we now have a commission for bureaucracy reduction which manages several operating bodies for bureaucracy reduction, all with their own processes and guidelines. I'm honestly worried that this might grow to a point of collapse.
  • cft 4y ago
    It's logical for any entity to attempt to capture more resources. Thus a government wants more government. Bigger budget, more salaries, more bureaucracy therefore.
  • yieldcrv 4y ago
    This is a great perspective that has allowed me to navigate society effectively For example, when it comes to taxation the outcome is that certain kinds transactions are incentivized, leading to no tax, while no individual bureaucrat or politician or resident would seem to agree about the ability of not paying any tax, the aggregate tax revenue services collaborate with a tax filer and support that ability
  • epc 4y ago
    Bureaucrats report to (mostly) elected politicians (in the US). Politicians report to the public. The public complain about food poisoning, not about 92 forms to open a restaurant. The politician tells their bureaucrats to “do something” about all the food poisoning by under regulated restaurants. The regulatory bureaucracy is a lagging, indirect response to bad behavior by previous individuals and businesses. It’s never going to absolutely prevent bad behavior just as speed limits do not actually prevent speeding, but it is a legal tool or cudgel to inhibit the behavior and punish it in retrospect. And that in turn is both to reduce the cost of government from dealing with responses to bad behavior and ensure the politicians get reelected.
• DeathArrow 4y ago
  US has built much of it's reputation around being business friendly. How is "92 Steps, 22 Forms, 17 Office Visits, and $5,554 in 12 Fees" being business friendly? Is US in the process of becoming a socialist bureaucratic country?
  • heretogetout 4y ago
    When I see that figure I think "that's all? That's what these business owners are complaining about, a month of a living wage salary? What crybabies."
• lebuffon 4y ago
  I find this very concerning in an American city. In The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando Desoto; He makes mention of the bureaucracy overhead in countries that fail at capitalism. Sounds like America needs some house cleaning in places. My sad observation however is that normal people try to fix things by adding on. It takes quite a bit of smarts to remove things from a system and make it work better. The only case I have heard of is New Zealand re-wrote their tax code to 12 (?) pages or something like that 30 years ago. I wonder how big it is now?
• pietroppeter 4y ago
  I first read it as “opening a rust-aurant…” lol
• VLM 4y ago
  At some point in economic decline, the business concepts of attendants pumping-gas-aaS and people shining-shoes-aaS become no longer widely distributed and profitable. Customers don't make long term investments in commodity -aaS businesses and when the cost exceeds the value they very quickly leave, and when enough leave the -aaS business folds. It seems likely we are nearing that point for many business models. Small scale retail, small scale restaurant. Even large scale retail is nearly dead, see the dead mall situation. It does seem somewhat ridiculous to have an ultra short term relationship with a servant to have them cook assembly line fashion, generally mediocre, food for you at enormous expense with numerous layers of middlemen in between. Certainly restaurants were an extremely small fraction of total caloric intake for the majority of history; there just wasn't enough excess wealth floating around for nonsense like that. Soon, as permanent economic decline continues, we will go back to generally not having restaurants. As always, people will adapt or perish, and usually they adapt. The future is always unevenly distributed and Boston may just be a little further along.
• djoldman 4y ago
  Many of these fees are not for a typical situation. For example, digging into the Minneapolis fees, one finds that $8,275.05 of the $13,972.68 total is for the Sewer Availability Charge described as: > ... a one-time fee that communities pay to Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES) when a residence or business connects to the metropolitan disposal system for the first time. [0] If one started a restaurant in a previously used restaurant space, my sense is that many of these large fees would be essentially zero. Still there is a lot of licensing and inspecting. [0] https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/business-services/licenses-permits/construction-permits-certificates/development-review-services/sewer-availability-charge/#:~:text=About,system%20for%20the%20first%20time https://www2.minneapolismn.gov/business-services/licenses-pe....
  • fakedang 4y ago
    This is pretty much the case in every country though. Tbf my dad has made a business of acquiring distressed restaurants and improving their profitability. In most cases, the suckers are first-time restaurant owners who viewed it as a side hustle rather than a full time job. In most cases, it costs about 4x as much to open a restaurant than to acquire a distressed one. Anecdotally, a restaurant that was built with a cost of about a million bucks (local currency) in a 500 sq ft place (expensive city), was acquired by him for about 50k, and is now back to clocking about 1.5 million in revenue.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• mhb 4y ago
  Barber Schools and License Requirements in Rhode Island 1. Graduate from a 1500-Hour Rhode Island Barber Training Program 2. Submit a Rhode Island Barber License Application 3. Pass the Rhode Island Written and Practical Licensing Exams 4. Start a Career in Rhode Island’s Barbering Industry 5. Renew your Rhode Island Barbering License Biannually https://www.barber-license.com/rhode-island/ https://www.barber-license.com/rhode-island/
  • briandear 4y ago
    Try African hair braiding. In many states simply to braid hair requires a 1000 hour cosmetology license. To braid fucking hair. Never once in my life heard of anyone dying or even getting sick because of a bad hair braider. https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/02/05/time-to-loosen-hair-braiders-from-knots-of-red-tape/amp/ https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/02/05/time-to-loosen-hair-...
• magicroot75 4y ago
  NIMBYism drives things like this. Sure, we abstractly want fewer regulations for the restaurant 12 blocks away. As long as you can keep strict regulations on the empty retail space below your apartment, the tight parking situation on your block, or the crime rate in your neighborhood.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  I feel like a lot of these problems would be sorted by having time limits of (say) 10 years for all laws in an area. If someone actually looked at all those requirements, forms etc as a whole, I bet a lot could be combined or are covering the same ground. But no one ever does. I also think restaurants can be a bad example: * Everyone wants to open them and there is no special qualification for doing so * They can easily make a lot of people sick * They employ kids, informally qualified staff, low wage workers and immigrants making it easy to for-see all sorts of abuses or issues especially in a demanding physical job with tiny profit margins * They often want to serve alcohol which is a socially complex, rightfully regulated activity * They require on-going management, not just "did you buy the right kit and hire the right person" but are you actually cleaning everything everyday correctly etc? They're a mess of big risks and poor management and no funding. And customers have no idea what they're getting until 24h+ later when they're bent over a toilet...
• jshprentz 4y ago
  Boston's Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire[1] claimed 492 lives in 1942, so I am not surprised that the city imposes many checks on new restaurants. Neither the headline, the article, nor the linked Institute for Justice report[2] list the specific steps, forms, visits, or fees. It is hard to know which are superfluous, overpriced, or excessively burdonsome. The report defines "steps" on page 17 (PDF page 21): > We calculated this metric by totaling the discrete tasks an entrepreneur must complete to start each of the business types. Tasks we counted as steps include but are not limited to: filing a form or application, submitting supporting documentation, scheduling and attending meetings and inspections, and completing ancillary requirements like training or zoning checks. Of the five business types in 20 cities studied, the report lists fees only for starting a restaurant in Minneapolis. Totalling $13,972.68, the fees are LLC filing: $155, Trade name registration: $50, Building plan review: $1,399.13, Building permit: $2,242.50, Plumbing permit: $207, Mechanical permit: $250, Electrical permit: $251, Sign permit: $156, Sewer availability charge: $8,275.05, Background report: $8, Restaurant license: $535, Food plan review: $310, Certified Food Protection Manager (CFPM) training: $99, and CFPM certificate: $35. We can compare the roughly $14,000 in startup fees (or just $5,554 in Boston) with the $375,500 median cost of starting a restaurant (according to a 2018 survey[3] by RestaurantOwner.com). I don't think those fees discourage entrepreneurs from opening restaurants. I agree with the report's overall conclusion: cities should make it cheaper, make it faster, and make it simpler. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire [2] https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Business-WEB-FINAL.pdf https://ij.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Barriers-to-Busine... [3] https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Survey-How-Much-Does-it-Cost-to-Open-a-Restaurant.cfm https://www.restaurantowner.com/public/Survey-How-Much-Does-...
• jrm4 4y ago
  For a long while, I theorized that most entrepeneur types who were complaining about government inefficiency were a bunch of entitled whiners; most were already starting from a place of privilege and were confusing mere necessary annoyances with true hardship. Then there came an opportunity, and I started my own web design business. I learned something important. I was right. It's really not that bad, and as many people have suggested, this red tape was put into place for reasons. I admit it's frequently annoying, but in no way is it a meaningful barrier to someone who has a dream and really wants to work for it.
  • prawn 4y ago
    What red tape exists for a web design business? At the most basic level, you can just work and charge. Maybe register a basic business name for $80 or whatever. If more successful, register a company and handle taxes a bit differently. Is it different where you live?
    • jrm4 4y ago
      Florida, so there's dealing with our sunbiz stuff. Taxes got weirder this year because there are now increased reporting requirements for subcontractors, etc.
• InefficientRed 4y ago
  At my last apartment, we got a new neighbor who ran a food truck and dumped the food truck's trash in our apartment's trash bins. This obviously introduced many issues. The (~6 very large) bins were always full by 3 days after pickup and then overfilled all over the back of the complex for the rest of the week. Rodent and especially ant/fruit fly issues exploded. The smell was atrocious. The bins were directly behind our kitchen door, and we didn't have AC, so our kitchen door had to stay closed. The kitchen door was key to the airflow that would naturally cool the apartment, so the entire apartment was miserable. Worst of all, the neighbor did not take any of the bins to the curb each week, was unresponsive, and our landlord was predictably unhelpful. For many weeks I patched the issue by hauling this guy's business trash to the curb every single morning (which is a lot more work, and much more unpleasant, than it perhaps sounds like). Before that experience, I would probably see rules like "food trucks must file a form proving they have a legal place to dump their refuse" and consider it to be absurd red tape.
  • wffurr 4y ago
    Well past time to go to the city inspector. Or refuse to haul the trash entirely.
    • InefficientRed 4y ago
      > Well past time to go to the city inspector. "Our neighbors have a lot of trash" is not a complaint that a city inspector is going to take seriously, and in any case our city was very landlord-friendly/human-hostile. In most cities waiting for the leas to be up and then moving out is always easier... We resolved this by threatening the neighbor to go to the office that permitted his food truck. If food truck regulations didn't exist, we would have been SOL until the lease was up. > Or refuse to haul the trash entirely. This was an impractical option. On an 85 degree day, our apartment would stay below 75 (and below 70 until late afternoon close to the end of the workday) if we kept the large front windows open, the kitchen door open, and some well-placed fans. It would heat up to 85 very quickly if you closed off the airflow. Working in 85 degree heat is highly unpleasant. To say nothing of the rats and fruit flies/ants, which were impossible to keep out of the apartment even when we kept the doors and windows closed.
• m0llusk 4y ago
  What may matter most is how these barriers are negotiated. Do people really need to be protected from barbers with limited training or could that be handled with disclosures? And how are violations discovered and resolved. In my case I started cleaning houses for money and had completed hundreds of cleanings by the time the city found out and let me know that license fees were due for that activity. The city insisted on full back payment of all licensing along with late fees and there was no option for negotiation, just the requirement that someone who was cleaning houses for money should suddenly cough up a couple of thousand dollars. Not only was a large payment required but records needed to be sorted out which ended up generating two long and tense visits to offices downtown. Of course some regulations are needed on businesses, but these regulations should be put in place for robust reasons, regularly reviewed, and enforced with care and compassion and options for forgiving unpaid fees in return for present and future compliance.
• darth_avocado 4y ago
  > it’s nearly as bad in San Francisco Goes on to report San Francisco is 4x the cost in Boston. Really?
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• blobbers 4y ago
  Sapiens volume 2 graphic novel is a nice tangent to this topic if one is looking for further thoughts on these sorts of topics. People have said it’s a bit preachy, but I prefer to consider it thought provoking.
• NegativeLatency 4y ago
  Having single payer healthcare would've helped me a lot when I was looking to start my own business. Without it it makes the personal savings runway too short.