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My wife cut hair professionally for twenty years. Between COVID, the birth our first child and going back to school she stopped. Now she wants to go back part

by donatj 2y ago

My wife cut hair professionally for twenty years. Between COVID, the birth our first child and going back to school she stopped. Now she wants to go back part time to make some extra money, but her license expired and that means she has to get her license back. That includes having to attend over 100 hours of class, for a slightly above minimum wage job many people do themselves, at home, with zero experience. It's absurd. Maybe an hour or two refresher is justifiable, but I assure you she had not forgotten how to cut hair to the extent that she needs 100+ hours of retraining. It's deeply embedded in her psyche at this point. My wife says she basically just needs to go hang out at a cosmetology school to make the hours but doesn't need to actually do anything while she is there. It is absolutely a racket.

omgJustTest 2y ago
I hear you about the schooling requirement / hours. However if the "racket" were not there, the vast surplus of labor providing "slightly above minimum wage" services would depress wages down to the legal minimum. The government would then be the only thing preventing a race-to-the-bottom in your wife making any money. I have seen deregulation of industries decimate trucking, giving rise to subhuman organizations like Prime Trucking. I would strongly advise anyone seeking deregulation to really consider... does this mean - literally - the only thing that one can offer as a competitive edge is how little money you are willing to take for this service? Additionally, given the wrecking ball currently applied to the us govt, I would strongly advise that "no tax on tips" and "default gone regulations" may help some minimum wage people, but they have super nefarious implications for other parts of the govt. "Tips" for example are now legal to politicians, per the US Supreme Court [Snyder v US, 2024] and "no tax on tips" implies that politicians do not have to record those tips as income on their taxes... which was possibly one of the last ways in which they could have been documented in any way.
- donatj 2y ago
  I disagree 100%, there is a big difference in quality between a haircut from an experienced stylist and your cousin Vinny. People right now go to fancy expensive salons when they could get a $15 haircut. I think people would certainly pay more for a reliable and stylish haircut even if they could get a bottom barrel haircut from a high schooler. You just pay for the quality of work you want done. What you call race to the bottom, I as a consumer call fair pricing not controlled by syndicates. Controlling the market by limiting the job pool to just the people who can already afford the time let alone the licensing fees really just serves to keep people in poverty. How many people could be working right now but can't afford the time and money to get licensed?
  - omgJustTest 2y ago
    In every industry there are creative people who make more than the average. This is about policy for a group of nearly 600k people. If there were no 'racket' I think that most people who want to cut hair are capable of stylish and reliable - above the Great Clips standard. "No regulation" could increase the labor pool a factor of 10x, given the propensity for these businesses to be 100% small $ transactions. [Editted in response to your edit] Every industry should have competition, but the national average for hair-cuts is near minimum wage. WTF are you smoking? Do you really believe if the minimum was gone there's a chance "fair pricing not controlled by syndicates" would be just above minimum wage? Is the govt minimum wage a "pricing controlled by syndicates"?
    - donatj 2y ago
      Do these businesses really even need to exist? They themselves are a racket. They're just overhead. Why can't my wife just cut hair out of our kitchen? Here at least it's illegal. I have no doubt she would have steady repeat clientele ready to pay for a good haircut. I firmly believe the value of something is what someone else is willing to pay, and that artificially inflating the price by limiting supply will always be immoral and monopolistic.
      - omgJustTest 2y ago
        People I know already do these home-haircuts as a business. They dont make money because its deregulated and every so mildly illegal, mostly from tax evasion.
        andriesm 2y ago
        Somebody's wife cut your hair in her kitchen and you paid in cash, no taxes. It's tax evasion, quick, let loose 1000s of new tax agents on the population to stop this travesty! Immediately! I say deregulate everything reasonable, stop trying to nake everything a nanny-society and micro-managing every last bit of compliance, and let the chips fall where they may! Let responsible adults live their lives. People self organise and figure most things out for themselves if you just let them. If kitchen hairstylists outcompete hair chains, I would be surprised but also not too worried - hardly the end of civilization at risk. But locking people artificially out of jobs and artificially inflating almost all everyday expenses for consumers are pretty big enshittifications, in my opinion.
- RajT88 2y ago
  I did not realize that last bit, but am not surprised. Just about every time a politician champions some legislation for "the little guys" it turns out it overwhelmingly benefits monied and powerful interests more. Definitely a trend I have observed when you scratch beneath the surface of things.
- Aurornis 2y ago
  > However if the "racket" were not there, the vast surplus of labor providing "slightly above minimum wage" services would depress wages down to the legal minimum. > The government would then be the only thing preventing a race-to-the-bottom in your wife making any money. Licensing is supposed to protect the consumer from bad practice, not to inflate wages and decrease competition for those who have licenses. It’s not good. You might imagine it being good if you think it would protect yourself from competition, but if everyone practiced this way you’d be forced to pay inflated prices and wait excessively long for every service. It would be a net loss. > I would strongly advise anyone seeking deregulation to really consider... does this mean - literally - the only thing that one can offer as a competitive edge is how little money you are willing to take for this service? If there was literally nothing to distinguish your services other than price, then artificially inflating prices through excessive licensing would be nothing other than stealing from consumers through force of law. In the real world, quality of service matters. People don’t go back to a hair stylist who does a bad job, though they may not immediately recognize one that doesn’t practice proper hygiene practices. This is where licensing should apply: Teaching and enforcing the practices that are not obvious, but nevertheless important for societal benefit. Barbers need to practice proper hygiene to prevent spread of disease. Builders need to practice proper constriction to avoid dangerous buildings. There are numerous real problems that aren’t obvious at the point of purchasing a service, but must be enforced at a society level to avoid widespread problems. These often go unappreciated in modern societies because we take them for granted. Spend some time in developing countries, though, and you’ll hear and experience a lot of negative stories from unregulated services.
thijson 2y ago
I can think of so many examples of protectionism in society. In Canada the dairy industry is a quota system, not just anyone can sell milk or eggs. The article suggests that there should be government bodies to regulate these industries instead of self regulation, however that lends itself to regulatory capture. It probably would be better than self regulation though, similar to a school board. I think that AI will fundamentally change health care, it's as good as a primary physician in a lot of cases. The barriers need to come down, that's what is driving the costs.
- sarchertech 2y ago
  > that's what is driving the costs. Physicians salaries make up 8.6% of medical spending. Kaiser did a study that found a 40% reduction in physician salaries would result in a 3% savings to consumers on medical costs.
  - thijson 2y ago
    Where are the costs then? Is it the MRI that costs $1000?
    - sarchertech 2y ago
      Equipment is heavily regulated and so it’s insanely expensive, drugs are heavily regulated and expensive to develop in general, infrastructure, malpractice insurance, non-physician labor, regulatory compliance, insanely expensive software, administrators etc… Then you add in the profit that has to be extracted at every level. Private equity buys up hospitals, physicians groups, and ambulance operators. They need to take their cut. Insurance companies need to take their cut. The free market doesn’t work great for to keep rent seekers from extracting profits because of insurance and the very nature of healthcare which reduces the ability of customers to shop around.
      - hedora 2y ago
        Last I checked (10 years ago?), 33% of US healthcare costs went to haggling between the insurance company and the administrative assistants the doctor has to hire. I’d guess it’s higher now. It also seems really easy to fix: Just have a standard price list, and auto accept/reject 99% of procedures at the time of administration. Also, have a billing system that lets the patient pay on discharge (like restaurants). Edit: Concrete example. I needed some medicine. There are two interchangeable options. One retails for $30, and the other for $600. The doctor chose the $600 version, and insurance rejected it. This wasted my afternoon, an hour of the pharmacist’s time, 15 minutes of insurance company time, and at least 45 minutes of time at the doctor’s office. On top of that, the doctor had to context switch back to my case to change the prescription. If the doctor had a UI when writing the prescription that contained a price list, whether insurance covers which drug, and a “no really, we need the expensive one” button (there is already such an override that the insurance company honors), then all of this waste would have been avoided.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
At what point is the cutoff between a few hours and more hours? If someone stopped cutting hair 20 years ago versus let the license lapse 2 years ago? How good is the record keeping? They might not log everything you do for 20 years, just 'if your license isn't lapsed you have completed everything currently required' and not have a mechanism for bringing someone with 1 year of no-compliance and someone with 20 years into compliance in a custom tailored manner.
_bin_ 2y ago
i get my hair cut by an unlicensed guy. he works out of a spare room in his house. good churchgoing man, upstanding member of the community, and gives the best haircuts i've ever had. he makes more money even though he only charges $17 for a cut.
grugagag 2y ago
> My wife says she basically just needs to go hang out at a cosmetology school to make the hours but doesn't need to actually do anything while she is there. While I agree there should be some kind of license - you don't want a random person become hair stylist for the day and then switch to something else - there probably should be some examinations of skills. The current racket is about making money and protecting incumbents from competition but it also wastes a lot of time in the process.
- cookie_monsta 2y ago
  > you don't want a random person become hair stylist for the day and then switch to something else Considering that the stakes are fairly low (compared to say, surgeon for a day) and that there are plenty of jobs that obviously do not require a license and we are happy to let the employer apply the skills test, where exactly would the line sit between needs license and doesn't?
- ssivark 2y ago
  > you don't want a random person become hair stylist for the day and then switch to something else Why though? The easier it is to switch in and out of careers, greater the likelihood that people will be well-matched to job opportunities. We will also have the least possible unemployment.
- ein0p 2y ago
  Why not? Why must I ask government permission and pay a fee to do anything at all? Is this America or North Korea?

by donatj 2y ago

omgJustTest 2y ago

I hear you about the schooling requirement / hours. However if the "racket" were not there, the vast surplus of labor providing "slightly above minimum wage" services would depress wages down to the legal minimum. The government would then be the only thing preventing a race-to-the-bottom in your wife making any money. I have seen deregulation of industries decimate trucking, giving rise to subhuman organizations like Prime Trucking. I would strongly advise anyone seeking deregulation to really consider... does this mean - literally - the only thing that one can offer as a competitive edge is how little money you are willing to take for this service? Additionally, given the wrecking ball currently applied to the us govt, I would strongly advise that "no tax on tips" and "default gone regulations" may help some minimum wage people, but they have super nefarious implications for other parts of the govt. "Tips" for example are now legal to politicians, per the US Supreme Court [Snyder v US, 2024] and "no tax on tips" implies that politicians do not have to record those tips as income on their taxes... which was possibly one of the last ways in which they could have been documented in any way.

donatj 2y ago
I disagree 100%, there is a big difference in quality between a haircut from an experienced stylist and your cousin Vinny. People right now go to fancy expensive salons when they could get a $15 haircut. I think people would certainly pay more for a reliable and stylish haircut even if they could get a bottom barrel haircut from a high schooler. You just pay for the quality of work you want done. What you call race to the bottom, I as a consumer call fair pricing not controlled by syndicates. Controlling the market by limiting the job pool to just the people who can already afford the time let alone the licensing fees really just serves to keep people in poverty. How many people could be working right now but can't afford the time and money to get licensed?
- omgJustTest 2y ago
  In every industry there are creative people who make more than the average. This is about policy for a group of nearly 600k people. If there were no 'racket' I think that most people who want to cut hair are capable of stylish and reliable - above the Great Clips standard. "No regulation" could increase the labor pool a factor of 10x, given the propensity for these businesses to be 100% small $ transactions. [Editted in response to your edit] Every industry should have competition, but the national average for hair-cuts is near minimum wage. WTF are you smoking? Do you really believe if the minimum was gone there's a chance "fair pricing not controlled by syndicates" would be just above minimum wage? Is the govt minimum wage a "pricing controlled by syndicates"?
  - donatj 2y ago
    Do these businesses really even need to exist? They themselves are a racket. They're just overhead. Why can't my wife just cut hair out of our kitchen? Here at least it's illegal. I have no doubt she would have steady repeat clientele ready to pay for a good haircut. I firmly believe the value of something is what someone else is willing to pay, and that artificially inflating the price by limiting supply will always be immoral and monopolistic.
    - omgJustTest 2y ago
      People I know already do these home-haircuts as a business. They dont make money because its deregulated and every so mildly illegal, mostly from tax evasion.
      - andriesm 2y ago
        Somebody's wife cut your hair in her kitchen and you paid in cash, no taxes. It's tax evasion, quick, let loose 1000s of new tax agents on the population to stop this travesty! Immediately! I say deregulate everything reasonable, stop trying to nake everything a nanny-society and micro-managing every last bit of compliance, and let the chips fall where they may! Let responsible adults live their lives. People self organise and figure most things out for themselves if you just let them. If kitchen hairstylists outcompete hair chains, I would be surprised but also not too worried - hardly the end of civilization at risk. But locking people artificially out of jobs and artificially inflating almost all everyday expenses for consumers are pretty big enshittifications, in my opinion.
RajT88 2y ago
I did not realize that last bit, but am not surprised. Just about every time a politician champions some legislation for "the little guys" it turns out it overwhelmingly benefits monied and powerful interests more. Definitely a trend I have observed when you scratch beneath the surface of things.
Aurornis 2y ago
> However if the "racket" were not there, the vast surplus of labor providing "slightly above minimum wage" services would depress wages down to the legal minimum. > The government would then be the only thing preventing a race-to-the-bottom in your wife making any money. Licensing is supposed to protect the consumer from bad practice, not to inflate wages and decrease competition for those who have licenses. It’s not good. You might imagine it being good if you think it would protect yourself from competition, but if everyone practiced this way you’d be forced to pay inflated prices and wait excessively long for every service. It would be a net loss. > I would strongly advise anyone seeking deregulation to really consider... does this mean - literally - the only thing that one can offer as a competitive edge is how little money you are willing to take for this service? If there was literally nothing to distinguish your services other than price, then artificially inflating prices through excessive licensing would be nothing other than stealing from consumers through force of law. In the real world, quality of service matters. People don’t go back to a hair stylist who does a bad job, though they may not immediately recognize one that doesn’t practice proper hygiene practices. This is where licensing should apply: Teaching and enforcing the practices that are not obvious, but nevertheless important for societal benefit. Barbers need to practice proper hygiene to prevent spread of disease. Builders need to practice proper constriction to avoid dangerous buildings. There are numerous real problems that aren’t obvious at the point of purchasing a service, but must be enforced at a society level to avoid widespread problems. These often go unappreciated in modern societies because we take them for granted. Spend some time in developing countries, though, and you’ll hear and experience a lot of negative stories from unregulated services.

thijson 2y ago

I can think of so many examples of protectionism in society. In Canada the dairy industry is a quota system, not just anyone can sell milk or eggs. The article suggests that there should be government bodies to regulate these industries instead of self regulation, however that lends itself to regulatory capture. It probably would be better than self regulation though, similar to a school board. I think that AI will fundamentally change health care, it's as good as a primary physician in a lot of cases. The barriers need to come down, that's what is driving the costs.

sarchertech 2y ago
> that's what is driving the costs. Physicians salaries make up 8.6% of medical spending. Kaiser did a study that found a 40% reduction in physician salaries would result in a 3% savings to consumers on medical costs.
- thijson 2y ago
  Where are the costs then? Is it the MRI that costs $1000?
  - sarchertech 2y ago
    Equipment is heavily regulated and so it’s insanely expensive, drugs are heavily regulated and expensive to develop in general, infrastructure, malpractice insurance, non-physician labor, regulatory compliance, insanely expensive software, administrators etc… Then you add in the profit that has to be extracted at every level. Private equity buys up hospitals, physicians groups, and ambulance operators. They need to take their cut. Insurance companies need to take their cut. The free market doesn’t work great for to keep rent seekers from extracting profits because of insurance and the very nature of healthcare which reduces the ability of customers to shop around.
    - hedora 2y ago
      Last I checked (10 years ago?), 33% of US healthcare costs went to haggling between the insurance company and the administrative assistants the doctor has to hire. I’d guess it’s higher now. It also seems really easy to fix: Just have a standard price list, and auto accept/reject 99% of procedures at the time of administration. Also, have a billing system that lets the patient pay on discharge (like restaurants). Edit: Concrete example. I needed some medicine. There are two interchangeable options. One retails for $30, and the other for $600. The doctor chose the $600 version, and insurance rejected it. This wasted my afternoon, an hour of the pharmacist’s time, 15 minutes of insurance company time, and at least 45 minutes of time at the doctor’s office. On top of that, the doctor had to context switch back to my case to change the prescription. If the doctor had a UI when writing the prescription that contained a price list, whether insurance covers which drug, and a “no really, we need the expensive one” button (there is already such an override that the insurance company honors), then all of this waste would have been avoided.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

At what point is the cutoff between a few hours and more hours? If someone stopped cutting hair 20 years ago versus let the license lapse 2 years ago? How good is the record keeping? They might not log everything you do for 20 years, just 'if your license isn't lapsed you have completed everything currently required' and not have a mechanism for bringing someone with 1 year of no-compliance and someone with 20 years into compliance in a custom tailored manner.

_bin_ 2y ago

i get my hair cut by an unlicensed guy. he works out of a spare room in his house. good churchgoing man, upstanding member of the community, and gives the best haircuts i've ever had. he makes more money even though he only charges $17 for a cut.

grugagag 2y ago

> My wife says she basically just needs to go hang out at a cosmetology school to make the hours but doesn't need to actually do anything while she is there. While I agree there should be some kind of license - you don't want a random person become hair stylist for the day and then switch to something else - there probably should be some examinations of skills. The current racket is about making money and protecting incumbents from competition but it also wastes a lot of time in the process.

cookie_monsta 2y ago
> you don't want a random person become hair stylist for the day and then switch to something else Considering that the stakes are fairly low (compared to say, surgeon for a day) and that there are plenty of jobs that obviously do not require a license and we are happy to let the employer apply the skills test, where exactly would the line sit between needs license and doesn't?
ssivark 2y ago
> you don't want a random person become hair stylist for the day and then switch to something else Why though? The easier it is to switch in and out of careers, greater the likelihood that people will be well-matched to job opportunities. We will also have the least possible unemployment.
ein0p 2y ago
Why not? Why must I ask government permission and pay a fee to do anything at all? Is this America or North Korea?