It also gives the state a stick to make sure people do what they want. Fight us and we revoke your license. It goes from protecting the consumer from scams, but often grows into a way to exercise power.
> In Louisiana more people pass the bar exam than pass the florist licensing exam.
I'm not surprised considering the different requirements to take those exams.
To be allowed to take the bar exam in Louisiana you have to be a graduate of a law school accredited by the American Bar Association. That takes 3 years and costs a lot of money.
Before actually taking the bar exam, most graduates then take a third party bar exam prep course for somewhere in the $2k to $4k range, which is an intense course focusing on just passing the bar exam.
To be allowed to take the retail florist license exam in Louisiana, it appears that all you have to do is make an appointment and pay a $114 exam fee. There don't seem to be in education or training requirements, although they do recommend the book "Flowers: Creative Design" [1] as a reference.
I'd expect then that a lot higher percentage of unprepared people take the florist exam than take the bar exam. If the bar exam was open to anyone who showed up and paid $114 the pass rate would certainly plummet.
This! There’s no public safety need for licensing barbers, florists, and other non-critical trades. In these situations it’s all about raising barriers of entry to limit competition.
Thanks for sharing, I just finished watching the video and found it very interesting. I was not aware how many states don't have any licensing requirements which really makes me question why we have so many licensing laws. Do you know if there have been any studies showing a change in pay based on the presence of license? I remember talking to a medical technician who moved from a state with licensing laws and he said he did take a pay cut but still was glad he moved.
It’s not just barbers. Excessive licensing requirements are an impediment to people starting small businesses.
“Since our founding, IJ has fought to roll back oppressive occupational-licensing rules in more than two dozen distinct occupations, ranging all the way from tax preparers to florists to traditional African hair braiders.”
IMHO it is everyone's duty as Americans to tip only in cash by handing it directly to the person who served you. Any other way the business owner, other employees, the government, and even the banks will try to get in between and take a piece.
For example, I have zero faith all the the tip money you send through the Starbucks or Door Dash app actually makes it into the pocket of the laborer.
I consider tips to be small personal gifts to thank someone for what they've done for me. It is nobody's business but mine and the recipient's.
Sad part about this is that a “DoorDash tip” is more of a “bid for a dasher to take my order,” so if it ever seems like you get low quality dasher, that may be why.
By tipping via CC, you've already involved at least 3 other entities and no longer have the reasonable expectation of privacy that provides tipper/tipee confidentiality.
Basically you are justifying the existence of a parallel economy that avoids taxes and regulations and that can only benefit people with customer facing positions. Amazing.
How about forbidding all tips, and fixing the economy to ensure that this money goes into the hand of all employees - not just the customer facing ones but also the one working behind the scene - and that this amount gets properly taxed so that social services can be provided to everyone ?
Be aware that even tips handed directly in cash will usually be pooled and split with the back of house and others. I worked at a coffee shop where the manager would take a share of tips. I asked her how her share was calculated and she said she just takes whatever she feels is fair based on how much she helped out the front of house that day. All our cash tips were pooled and we got them as part of our paycheck. Compared to any other coffee shop I worked at my tips were terrible there, I would make in two weeks what I would usually pull in a shift or two anywhere else.
I don't know -- there's pretty lax zoning in Ohio. You can drive for hours and be constantly surrounded by strip malls. It's pretty much a hellhole.
In other words: There's a reason for zoning.
The U.S. is actually pretty lax, on average, in terms of zoning compared to some other parts of the world, though it is certainly a state-by-state thing.
It's really not fair to lump zoning in with things like civil forfeiture.
Strip malls are generally one story buildings with tons of parking. They’re exactly the sort of thing that even very strict zoning codes allow.
If you instead checked how much of the state allowed 6-story apartment buildings, you’d come to a very different conclusion. Doubly so if the building didn’t have a massive parking lot.
> They’re exactly the sort of thing that even very strict zoning codes allow.
My experience working with commercial real estate leads me to believe that your experience with strip malls is driving your consideration here.
Strict or Not Strict don't encompass what zoning does. Different jurisdictions deal with the issue in significantly different ways. Plenty of urban locations do not allow for strip-mall style commercial plazas that aren't also mid-rise buildings. You wouldn't find a strip mall in an area zoned for heavy industrial use, or a place zoned for a residential subdivision - strict or not strict doesn't come into the picture.
That they're among the only things that you can legally build in a lot of places. They're totally fine if that's what the owner wants to build. They're not totally fine if the owner would rather build something else but can't.
As a sibling said: "Strip malls are generally one story buildings with tons of parking."
Car culture and low density zoning sucks. We should be mixed zoning these units with multiple stories of residential on top of the commercial space and pushing the storefront up to the road. If absolutely necessary to accommodate motor vehicles, put a multistory garage behind the storefronts (downtown San Mateo is an example of this), but otherwise infrastructure for walking, biking, and and accessible transit should be emphasized. Finally, strip mall architecture is typically of an ugly cookie-cutter design.
Not everybody lacks a car and kids. For those that do more power to them -they can live, work,play in elite adult playgrounds. But if you have kids you probably want a yard and a car and that probably will involve the suburbs, parking lots and strip centers.
I strongly urge you to visit Europe and see how mixed-use housing can be implemented to promote a car-free culture by largely eliminating parking lots, while keeping the greenery and shopping malls.
I have family in Europe and I think many Americans have a bit of a skewed view. Take a trip to Paris or Copenhagen and you see this car-free, bike oriented, public transit culture. But that’s kinda like visiting New York and DC and Boston and making the same conclusion about the US. Plenty of Europe is suburban with houses and a car culture. I think cars are actually quite common outside the city center, even if you live in an apartment like my grandparents (Poland and France), they still have a family car they drive to the store and mall and such. Definitely a more walkable focus in general, but this vision of Europe as this car-free utopia doesn’t seem accurate to my experience.
I've got some bad news, occupational licensing is a lot worse in other places, like Europe. America is pretty open in that regard save for some occupations. The institute of justice is fighting a lot of requirements.
> How come this is how it works and that there are barbers at all?
At a guess, I'd have thought it was at the behest of the incumbent barber community. If they can also control who gets to do the training eg if the practical aspects have to occur in Rhode Island barber shops, then they have a de facto closed shop. Always handy for a business to be able to prevent competition.
I think they first rent a chair from an established barber and make little; once they have experience they open their own shop and start renting out chairs to other apprentice barbers.
This is an example of regulatory capture through licensing. It's bad for consumers, bad for the economy, bad for job-seekers and only good for a small handful of incumbents and politicians.
I don't get the part that's not making sense. Do you think the salary's too low?
Sure as shit beats roofing. Won't wreck your knees and back like the trades or concrete work or framing. Industry as a whole's less of a sausage fest than those are, which may be a perk (I dunno, I'm not a barber).
Regular hours, no asshole managers or inhumane algorithms deciding you need to commute in for an extra 4-hour late evening shift outside your usual working hours at your fast food job.
It's social. You get to be indoors, in air conditioning. You work at one place, don't have to drive all over to get to job sites.
Slightly creative but the work largely goes on autopilot once you're good at it, I expect, which in my experience makes time fly. Slow days might suck because you're not making as much money, but if your station's clean & ready I assume you can read or chat or whatever and don't have to pretend to be working, which is draining.
Might be (I do not know) easier to get into than a lot of jobs, if you have a criminal record.
Nobody makes you factor numbers or solve quadratic equations before being allowed to do it (college algebra—not even calculus—kills a lot of college degree attempts).
There's some kind of fairly well-worn path toward starting your own business.
Median household income in the US was under $70,000 in 2019. Two adults pulling down $42,000 means you're doing better than median.
> Sure as shit beats roofing. Won't wreck your knees and back like the trades or concrete work or framing. Industry as a whole's less of a sausage fest than those are, which may be a perk (I dunno, I'm not a barber).
Every woman I've ever known who worked in a salon quit after a few years due to RSI issues in their hands.
Barber combines a lot of chemicals on top of people head/face. Just because you don't see them as knowledge worker doesn't mean they can work uneducated.
Truly you should know the different implications on doing things on one own heads instead of on the head of someone else, and the difference in scale between doing it vocationally when needed and doing it all day every working day, so I don't understand why even bring the teenager example up.
Chemicals being hair/face/skin products (sprays, gells, shaving cream, creams/moisturizers) which are commercially produced, tested and sold at retail/wholesale?
Yes, they need to be knowledgable (growth patterns/directions, skin issues that may cause complications, hair-loss aware haircuts), but 3-times the training as a police officer, really? To be a Rhode Island State Trooper, it is a "grueling" 24-week program... https://risp.ri.gov/academy/trooper
Maybe prior to the 19th-century, when barbers were also surgeons and dentists that would be a minimal amount of training - but that is no longer the case.
Not all of them are. Also, a company can sustain lawsuit differently and has access to better documentation to defend its products. Also, you're responsible to follow dosages when you apply them by your own, but the barber is when applying them on you.
>but 3-times the training as a police officer, really?
This is a crummy comparison, because the problem isn't that barbers get too much training (maybe they do) but that police officers get very little training.
> which are commercially produced, tested and sold at retail/wholesale?
That doesn't mean they won't kill you -> try drinking bleach or pesticides for demostic plants, both avaliable at the nearest supermarket.
Barber chemicals can give you skin burns or render you partially bilnd. That's mostly female products though, being a men's barber is typically simpler.
that being said, most of UK has no special lisence for barbers -> just need to follow health and safety and have insurance.
I've done training on handling acids that will eat right through your flesh, chemicals that make deadly gases, and how to handle biohazards like live HIV, and all were less than a day.
"they train you not to touch things? Must be super easy, don't touch the thing."
"it's super easy not to touch the thing, we have to make chemicals touch people face safely, we don't have the luxury of just not letting the face not touch the chemical"
If the instructions fit on a two pages [1] and people can do it at home with no training, I think they should be able to to cover it in a day certification for professionals.
That's the instructions set for one product. Now enter a barber shop and start counting.
You also need to know all the interactions between products, and between products and skin, and between product and skin in the context of the goal of the sitting client, which might want a color point in between two tints with reflex of another.
Would you want someone with no experience cutting your hair?
We're in a profession that requires next to no training (except for maybe an odd "leet code" test that has no relevance to our day-to-day work, though there are plenty of jobs that don't even need that.) Maybe we're spoiled.
Hairstylists at the walk-up-only places that say they do a "super" job often put caustic chemicals on clients where the chemicals don't belong and don't clean it up as they go. The client will be somewhat more comfortable at a better salon. Box color from a drug store is very mild and doesn't last as long, so DIY is not great. Hair straightening chemistry "from Brazil" is so hard-core that pregnant women feel the need to avoid the area (or salon). So not only does the required training matter, there is a huge correlation between what you pay and what it's like.
- chemistry for mixing color (actually pretty complicated and depends from person to person. If you’ve ever gotten your hair colored, they have a record of your exact formula + notes).
- being able to look at random photos people bring in and reconstruct the cut on your head with your hair texture and curl characteristics.
- actually making you look good.
- learning how to use straight razor without slitting your throat.
- learning how to do all of this within a set amount of time to fit in more clients per day.
She made over $100k per year before we left the states. Her men’s cuts were like $40 or something, I’m not sure, I never paid for it, but it was more than $30. Either way, it is the best haircut I’ve ever had — she can spot “cheap” cuts a mile away (one of our first date talking points, actually). If you want to not look cheap from a distance, get a real haircut at a real barber or salon.
It took her nearly 15 years to get to that level, but she could name her price by that point and people would pay.
They all say that to establish confidence in their new client. Every time my wife goes to a new hairstylist, she comes home and says "she told me my last cut/color was horrible and I need to come back for more treatments".
They might be, or they could be telling the truth. There’s no way to know for certain as long as it’s a zero-sum game.
My understanding is that stylists have to actually cut your hair several times to understand which parts grow faster than others and cut it in a way such that when it grows out it still looks good. I’ve definitely heard my wife tell new clients their previous stylist is excellent and ask why they are sitting in her chair, while she is flipping the hair around to reverse engineer how it was cut so she can attempt to replicate the cut.
According to my wife, “cheap” cuts don’t grow out well, the original shape isn’t held as it grows so it looks weird. If you aren’t just another body in a chair, iow, she knows how your hair grows, it will be cut so that it grows out and keeps it’s original shape.
Because I taught a piece of Rhode Island’s occupational licensing insanity in my microeconomics class, I’d encourage someone to look up how long Rhode Island spends training its police officers by comparison.
I don’t have the figure in front of me but it is A LOT less. Maybe 400 hours?
Is there any place in the US where they actually do comprehensive training of police officers? Because here the police officers need to take a three-year program in a vocational university.
Focusing on training is pointless when the incentives are set up wrong. Hold police officers accountable under the laws they purport to uphold (eg the ones against second degree and third degree murder), and they'll stop immediately reaching for their suspect-stopping remote control. Otherwise training is mainly a lesson in what to say to justify themselves afterwards.
Yup, for as long as cops have a license to kill as long as they remember to say "I was a scared little baby, the bad man was very scawy" the training just doesn't matter. They'll just keep killing until they face consequences.
Uncharitable and inaccurate comment. Most police officers do a good job and risk their lives and livelihood enforcing the rule of law. Disparaging a profession because of a few highly publicized bad apples is causing police forces to stand down and violent crime to rise. Comments like this are fueling the defund the police movement and are why many cities are revisiting the crime waves of the 70s and 80s.
If you want to get to the truth of a matter, you need to hold conflicting thoughts in your head at the same time. Most cops are doing a good job, and most people they interact with are criminals. The system allows all of their priors to run amok, unjustly harming everyone they interact with. The system/union protects the bad apples that go even further, who spoil the bunch and gives the profession a bad image. By holding one side blameless, you are contributing to the ongoing destruction of the institution. If you're truly interested in law and order, you should focus on the current lack of law and order for the people tasked with upholding it.
As for the actual recent "crime waves", that is being debated to death elsewhere. Like everything, it's some of column A and some of column B and the partisan narratives distract rather than enlighten.
The real negative I've seen is the culture. Backing up your brother is more important than doing what is right. Racist or dehumanizing banter can be rampant in some departments too.
The incentive is that they want to be part of the "in" group and not ostracized, or worse.
Police are effectively unbound by the laws they claim to uphold - unless the case is egregious, there is an extreme amount of public outrage, and the DA has a spine. As the damage they cause is attributed to "the state" rather than their personal decisions, they have little incentive to keep that damage to a minimum. Essentially, for any situation involving "the police" you should be asking yourself what would happen to a non-police citizen who did the same thing.
You've outlined the lack of a negative incentive (the lack of accountability) but I was asking more about the positive incentive. I.e., what is there incentive for doing the things society doesn't want them to do?
E.g., if the IRS doesn't hold me accountable, there is no negative incentive to stop me from cheating on my taxes. However, I may still pay my taxes because I have a positive incentive to fund social programs I value.
It's selfishly safer to use deadly force on someone that might possibly defend themselves, and it's easier to shoot someone who may run away rather than having to chase. Take a look at footage from countries where the police don't carry guns to see the type of physical work American police are shirking.
In Minnesota (where so many bad police related things have happened in the past few years) you need a college degree and then police training on top of that.
Just so everyone's aware 'college degree' here is expansive including two-year (community/vocational/technical/etc) colleges. I know many people who went to Ridgewater College (a college locally known having low standards and keeping the high school party going) specifically for a degree 'law enforcement'. Highlights include supervised taser use on each other (which probably aids in a mentality of assuming they know how the experience translates to others and underestimating risk)
ETA: per the link, the degree requirement isn't applicable to those with prior experience and having been working in police sometime in the prior six years
Some areas prefer or require undergraduate degrees, but those can often be bypassed with experience in a location with less stringent entry requirements. The requirements are all over the place.
In my location (suburban DC), the posted requirements aren't all that high (21 years old, high school completion), but it's a competitive county (high income, relatively low crime, reasonable pay) so the majority of applicants are either college graduates OR ex-military.
An alternative that still requires 10000 hours of classroom time, plus 840 hours of apprenticeship time. at 40 hrs/week that's 46 weeks - basically an entire year. To cut hair.
The article says you can work as an apprentice for 2 full years, OR do 1,000 hours in a classroom + 840 hours as an apprentice.
It doesn't sound like that bad of a gig. You can start earning a living wage right out of high school, with a guaranteed promotion into a middle class lifestyle within two years. By that time, your college going peers will be deep in debt and still two years away from a real paycheck.
Not sure the dismissive tone is warranted. It's a craft that requires skill and training. Here in Germany it's a full vocational program that generally takes three years. You can only learn so much in a year and just like in any other profession after a year you're still going to be a beginner.
So why prevent people from legally cutting hair or? If it's a bad haircut customer won't come back. Licensing is simply a way to put a moat around industry and drives up labor costs and unemployment.
It makes establishments viable by raising the barrier to people cutting hair in their basements.
It’s ultimately better for the profession and for the state, as things like sales tax collections have higher compliance rates in established businesses.
because licensure is also a way to guarantee quality standards, safety and provide training and representation for members of an industry. They're reputational tools.
They tend to incentivize the creation of industry bodies that see that employers are collectively represented, fairly compensated and that hucksters are kept out. When people start cutting hair in their home they're not going to run fabulous businesses, they're going to look for alternatives to accredit themselves because that signal is valuable, it's how people end up at lambda school or online rating platforms.
The 'ed-tech' sector that is emerging around unregulated professions is an example of what happens if you don't have licenses. You have a vulture-like companies that offer people pseudo-qualifications without representation or any real chance to judge the standards of their education.
> You probably spend most of the 1500 hours as an apprentice.
From the article:
> If you want to do [an apprenticeship instead of training], you will need to complete 1000 hours of training at a barbering school, along with a minimum of 840 hours of on-the-job training.
My reading is that there are two apprenticeship options:
> If you want to complete a barber apprenticeship to fulfill your educational requirements, you will need to become registered as a barber apprentice with the Rhode Island Board. You do this by submitting the Rhode Island Barber Apprentice Application. Once registered, you will need to work full-time under the direct supervision of a licensed barber for two full years.
> The Rhode Island Board allows you to mix formal education and apprenticeship experience, as well. If you want to do this, you will need to complete 1000 hours of training at a barbering school, along with a minimum of 840 hours of on-the-job training.
The options are 2 full years as an apprentice, OR 1000 hours of training + 840 hours as an apprentice.
What part? I grew up there. Can confirm that as soon as you leave the WASP-y suburbs, dudes in wife beaters and gold crosses on chains really start coming out.
I'm told there used to be a really strong Italian / Portuguese culture around Providence / Warwick / Bristol. That might be where someone gets the stereotypes about machismo and Roman Catholic jewelry. I suspect this part has changed a lot in recent decades.
Not sure "WASP-y" applies much of anywhere in Rhode Island. It's reportedly[0] the most Roman Catholic state in the U.S.
Providence strikes me as similar to most other small-medium cities with universities.
The folks I've met from the rural areas (mostly Exeter, Charlestown area) seem pretty much like people I've met in other rural areas in New England. I.e., more likely to lean conservative, more self-reliant for daily needs, etc.
> Not sure "WASP-y" applies much of anywhere in Rhode Island. It's reportedly[0] the most Roman Catholic state in the U.S.
It definitely does. Barrington, East Greenwich, North Kingstown, Tiverton, Newport, and (parts of) Providence are very white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. Also relatively high Jewish populations.
Rural RI (and most of rural southern New England) is definitely "more" conservative than the suburbs, but it's nothing compared to Rural USA. There's a bit of self-reliance theater going on. Rural northern New Englanders are a bit more committed.
And then there's Warwick, Cranston, Johnston, North Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls. Long history of Italian and Portuguese culture, and the attendant Catholicism.
Rhode Island is an interesting mix of cultures. It's also quite beautiful. Most visitors have only seen it from I-95 between NYC and Boston, which is by far the least attractive way to see the area.
I miss RI pizza and seafood terribly. Nowhere else in the US really compares. However, I make the conscious trade for better Mexican and Asian food!
To the extent that it has changed, it is an example of those Mediterranean peoples assimilating to the mores and culture of the Protestant Anglos who were here before them, as the Irish have done.
The pace is slow (in Bristol, you're not really a 'native Bristolian' unless you have six generations' worth of ancestry in and around town); but it is happening.
In Germany, it's a three year apprenticeship. You get paid a (rather low) wage during that time. As far as I know, you're not allowed to do the job without completing the apprenticeship.
It's amazing how much little we trust people to cut out hair, especially when we compare the amount of training required for other things.
For instance; in Ohio, the 700 hour training program for teachers to use guns was just paired back to 24.
>How is it rational to allow untrained people to have weapons around elementary and other school students?
"...in the USA."
I wonder if, when some teacher eventually does go on a spree, the training will allow them to rationally kill more 'than would have been previously expected".
Additional gun question. In religious schools would nuns, for example, be expected to be armed?
"I wonder if, when some teacher eventually does go on a spree, the training will allow them to rationally kill more 'than would have been previously expected"."
Probably not. Most of the training is about use of force and very basic marksmanship.
"Additional gun question. In religious schools would nuns, for example, be expected to be armed?"
No one is being expected to be armed. It's optional/voluntary.
I agree that training is a good thing when dealing with people who hold power or responsibility over others - armed or not.
I would imagine that many people don't see it as a huge issue given that 25+ states don't require training to carry a gun in public; that school children are also in the public areas where those people carry; and that there are exceptionally few issues with those carrying a gun legally, even more so in the context of school children being affected. Add to that the idea that if a teacher can't be trusted/responsible with a weapon around a child (responsibility could include choosing not to carry if they don't feel competent), then they probably don't have the trust/responsibility necessary to be a teacher in general.
The predominate threat of guns to children is that they gain unsupervised access to one. I imagine/hope that a large part of the training focuses on that. No leaving it in a purse/desk/etc.
It wasn't a 700 hour training program for teachers to use guns. It was a peace officer training course (Law Enforcement Officer). Maybe 24 hours isn't enough, but that's 3 days of coursework normally. As opposed to 4.5 months of training (that's probably unpaid, which really amounts to: no one took it).
Just for additional perspective on why those number have such a gap, the required training for armed guard is about 40 hours depending on the state (some more, some less).
Barbers do more than just cut hair. Their responsibilities are more complicated than safe handling of a gun, and also include tasks that could potentially harm people. The safe handling of a gun is much more straightforward.
My Emergency Medical Technician course was around 120 hours, after which I could begin responding to 911 calls in an ambulance. Although, to be fair, trauma shears have blunt tips.
Just because some professional group decides require 1500 hours for licensing to protect their profession monopoly doesn't mean the profession is anymore important then one that requires 100.
A lot of barber/cosmetologist training is hands-on with customers while an instructor watches.
Also keep in mind that a lot of work on hair can be complicated using dangerous chemicals. If you're a guy who just gets a trim or buzz cut every month you may not appreciate this. A relaxer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxer appointment can take a couple hours and cost well over $100 not including tip even at a run-of-the-mill place. The chemicals can burn skin, or damage hair that took years to grow. Now consider hairdressers need to learn this, and colorizing, and a ton of other things, for many different hair types. This all takes time.
The idea that barber/cosmetologist training is some kind of cartel situation is absurd. They make around $20-30/hour.
You still need some licensing to ensure people understand the basics, like hygiene, since everyone has an interest in making sure hairdressers won't spread lice or accidentally cut their customers with dirty tools.
Most of the money in hairdressing is in the complicated stuff. People do this because they want to make a career of it. Maybe you're imagining some kind of two week training program which outputs someone who does nothing but run a clipper over people's heads all day for $5 each. The economics and incentives for that don't make sense to me. People who want ultra cheap cuts will probably just buy their own clippers anyway.
To check that someone can give a haircut safely you have to check that they can give a haircut at all, which means the haircut needs to be at some minimal level of quality.
If you can't give a haircut then you can't give a safe haircut.
Specific example: most people expect a basic haircut for a man to trim around the ears. If I never trim around the ears then maybe I'm being safe, but you can't say I give a safe haircut because I'm not even giving a haircut as most people expect it. In particular I'm avoiding one of the most dangerous parts. You need to watch me trim around the ears in a minimally correct way to make sure I know how to do it safely.
I never said a good job, I said a minimally correct job. You can't evaluate whether someone can trim around the ears safely if their haircut is so bad they don't trim around the ears at all. I'm not sure how else to say it.
I'm not trying to convince you that a hairdresser needs 1500 hours of training to give a buzz cut.
I'm not trying to convince you that your barber needs to be able to do every possible hair procedure to give you a buzz cut. We could have barbers who are only licensed to do buzz cuts. We don't have them though because no one wants them to exist, not the barbers, schools, salons, public or government. Consider that being a barber who only gives buzz cuts is like being a programmer who only writes web-scraping scripts on freelance sites. They could exist though, theoretically.
>We don't have them though because no one wants them to exist, not the barbers, schools, salons, public or government. Consider that being a barber who only gives buzz cuts is like being a programmer who only writes web-scraping scripts on freelance sites. They could exist though, theoretically.
We don't know that because it is illegal. Most men cut use Clippers and scissors. There are businesses that operate all day doing these haircuts. You can teach someone how not to cut an ear off, poke an eye out with scissors and clippers very quickly. There is no regulatory middle option. Even if there is no demand, there could still be a regulatory middle option.
* Idaho has "Barber – Barber-stylist 1800 hours; Barber (no chemicals) 900 hours"
* Wyoming has "Barber – 1250 hours with chemical services, 1000 without chemical services"
Maybe 900 or 1000 hours still seems like a lot to you, I don't know. Given the politics of these states it's unlikely their governments are being strong-armed by labor cartels or over-regulating on general principle.
There aren't people regularly dying or winding up in the ER in states that don't require 10 months of expensive training to cut hair, so there is obviously a more reasonable line to draw.
A lot of the training is hands-on. It's a trade school. You're not spending a entire month studying the theory of scissors, you're spending a lot of that time working on many customers under supervision. Even a simple haircut for a man might take a professional 20 minutes. A more complex cut can take longer. A student can take twice as long as a professional. It all takes time. It's a lot of work. I don't know what you can cut out without reducing quality. The fact that all states have converged on similar requirements supports that.
As I see it, the story here isn't "wow barbers in rhode island have too much power" the story is "why did we abandon them so badly they were driven to this extreme?"
This situation exists because barbers managed to organize enough to get their profession enshrined in law in a way that protects their wages. Making a skilled but underpaid profession into a reasonably well paid one.
If the US had decent baseline wages and protections for workers, barbers wouldn't have to go to great lengths to protect themselves at the cost of stupid hoops for anyone trying to enter the profession.
It's like in a western, where some town on the frontier - ignored by the government and civil society - turns to a gang of outlaws for protection. Extreme circumstances lead to extreme solutions.
Judging from https://www.barber-license.com/ and clicking state by state, the VAST majority of states have 1000+ hour licensing programs. States that don't have an explicit n-hours requirement have wording like "Graduate from a New York State–Approved Barber School" which doesn't sound too different.
As an American, the absurdity of the TV License system comes from the fact that the hullabaloo and intrusive enforcement can all be avoided if the BBC was simply funded like any other government program. Sure, it might be "unfair" that people who don't watch the BBC are forced to fund it with a small portion of their taxes, but that seems much better than having government agents snooping around trying to fine people for watching TV without paying.
You make it seem a lot more sinister than it is, you get a letter, which you ignore, or simply tell them to FO and then probably never hear from them again.
Why can't we have this for software developers and other computer engineers? I'm really sick of working with engineers that lack basic knowledge about their craft.
So, there's no discussion here of if this makes Rhode Island's barbers significantly better than other states. Does it? Anyone have experience getting a Rhode Island haircut vs. somewhere else nearby? Even Googling around doesn't seem to show much.
Just considering the effect on supply and demand: barriers to entry reduce the supply of labor, which increases its price. Just like, say, doctors are very well-paid because they are in limited supply.
My jurisdiction is along the same lines. Recent election gave a majority government to the party whose plan is to nuke this.
The government is doing this largely due to a single reason. Barbers/hairdressers are extremely unhealthy to your population. You practically can't have barbers in your society and socialized medicine. It's more of an either or situation.
Traditional korean barber shave. Teapot from disgusting water reservoir? You're getting covid, hiv, and monkeypox from the lather off the side of the stock pot. The standard straight razor with strop? Just look at all the rot? decay?
Id venture to guess even this mask wearing, glove wearing, perfectly clean, replaceable blades that throw out the hiv from the last client they cut. No lather of death bacteria. Barbecide exists!
Ill tell you though, the korean shave will be 100x better.
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In Louisiana more people pass the bar exam than pass the florist licensing exam. It is protectionism through government power.
I'm not surprised considering the different requirements to take those exams.
To be allowed to take the bar exam in Louisiana you have to be a graduate of a law school accredited by the American Bar Association. That takes 3 years and costs a lot of money.
Before actually taking the bar exam, most graduates then take a third party bar exam prep course for somewhere in the $2k to $4k range, which is an intense course focusing on just passing the bar exam.
To be allowed to take the retail florist license exam in Louisiana, it appears that all you have to do is make an appointment and pay a $114 exam fee. There don't seem to be in education or training requirements, although they do recommend the book "Flowers: Creative Design" [1] as a reference.
I'd expect then that a lot higher percentage of unprepared people take the florist exam than take the bar exam. If the bar exam was open to anyone who showed up and paid $114 the pass rate would certainly plummet.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Flowers-Creative-James-Johnson-Jr/dp/...
I never did quite understand their obsession with hairdresser licensing but all their institutions push it.
Marketing. It's highly relatable to larger swaths of the population.
There's plenty of other licensing things that are even more asinine but they don't have the broad mass market appeal.
“Since our founding, IJ has fought to roll back oppressive occupational-licensing rules in more than two dozen distinct occupations, ranging all the way from tax preparers to florists to traditional African hair braiders.”
These are the examples of when I think society, overall, makes no sense.
How come this is how it works and that there are barbers at all?
For example, I have zero faith all the the tip money you send through the Starbucks or Door Dash app actually makes it into the pocket of the laborer.
I consider tips to be small personal gifts to thank someone for what they've done for me. It is nobody's business but mine and the recipient's.
Apparently it’s a big thing of “no tip, no trip”.
So if I tip via CC, you agree it's not your business to tell me off?
How about forbidding all tips, and fixing the economy to ensure that this money goes into the hand of all employees - not just the customer facing ones but also the one working behind the scene - and that this amount gets properly taxed so that social services can be provided to everyone ?
How about de-taxing and de-regulating the other economy?
Why is it the tipped workers who have to make the compromise? They're not exactly on top of the world to begin with.
In other words: There's a reason for zoning.
The U.S. is actually pretty lax, on average, in terms of zoning compared to some other parts of the world, though it is certainly a state-by-state thing.
It's really not fair to lump zoning in with things like civil forfeiture.
The common theme is that they're both massive affronts to property rights.
If you instead checked how much of the state allowed 6-story apartment buildings, you’d come to a very different conclusion. Doubly so if the building didn’t have a massive parking lot.
My experience working with commercial real estate leads me to believe that your experience with strip malls is driving your consideration here.
Strict or Not Strict don't encompass what zoning does. Different jurisdictions deal with the issue in significantly different ways. Plenty of urban locations do not allow for strip-mall style commercial plazas that aren't also mid-rise buildings. You wouldn't find a strip mall in an area zoned for heavy industrial use, or a place zoned for a residential subdivision - strict or not strict doesn't come into the picture.
Car culture and low density zoning sucks. We should be mixed zoning these units with multiple stories of residential on top of the commercial space and pushing the storefront up to the road. If absolutely necessary to accommodate motor vehicles, put a multistory garage behind the storefronts (downtown San Mateo is an example of this), but otherwise infrastructure for walking, biking, and and accessible transit should be emphasized. Finally, strip mall architecture is typically of an ugly cookie-cutter design.
At a guess, I'd have thought it was at the behest of the incumbent barber community. If they can also control who gets to do the training eg if the practical aspects have to occur in Rhode Island barber shops, then they have a de facto closed shop. Always handy for a business to be able to prevent competition.
This is an example of regulatory capture through licensing. It's bad for consumers, bad for the economy, bad for job-seekers and only good for a small handful of incumbents and politicians.
Sure as shit beats roofing. Won't wreck your knees and back like the trades or concrete work or framing. Industry as a whole's less of a sausage fest than those are, which may be a perk (I dunno, I'm not a barber).
Regular hours, no asshole managers or inhumane algorithms deciding you need to commute in for an extra 4-hour late evening shift outside your usual working hours at your fast food job.
It's social. You get to be indoors, in air conditioning. You work at one place, don't have to drive all over to get to job sites.
Slightly creative but the work largely goes on autopilot once you're good at it, I expect, which in my experience makes time fly. Slow days might suck because you're not making as much money, but if your station's clean & ready I assume you can read or chat or whatever and don't have to pretend to be working, which is draining.
Might be (I do not know) easier to get into than a lot of jobs, if you have a criminal record.
Nobody makes you factor numbers or solve quadratic equations before being allowed to do it (college algebra—not even calculus—kills a lot of college degree attempts).
There's some kind of fairly well-worn path toward starting your own business.
Median household income in the US was under $70,000 in 2019. Two adults pulling down $42,000 means you're doing better than median.
Every woman I've ever known who worked in a salon quit after a few years due to RSI issues in their hands.
Plus it’s people’s hair/beards which can have a profound impact on their appearance and thus their mental state.
All good reasons to train from “can succeed” to “cannot fail.”
Edit: Case in point: https://reddit.com/r/funny/comments/vdnocs/went_to_a_new_bar...
Somehow the rest of the states don’t have exploding gas stations problems.
Lawmakers must think we are like Zoolander
Yes, they need to be knowledgable (growth patterns/directions, skin issues that may cause complications, hair-loss aware haircuts), but 3-times the training as a police officer, really? To be a Rhode Island State Trooper, it is a "grueling" 24-week program... https://risp.ri.gov/academy/trooper
Maybe prior to the 19th-century, when barbers were also surgeons and dentists that would be a minimal amount of training - but that is no longer the case.
Not all of them are. Also, a company can sustain lawsuit differently and has access to better documentation to defend its products. Also, you're responsible to follow dosages when you apply them by your own, but the barber is when applying them on you.
This is a crummy comparison, because the problem isn't that barbers get too much training (maybe they do) but that police officers get very little training.
That doesn't mean they won't kill you -> try drinking bleach or pesticides for demostic plants, both avaliable at the nearest supermarket.
Barber chemicals can give you skin burns or render you partially bilnd. That's mostly female products though, being a men's barber is typically simpler.
that being said, most of UK has no special lisence for barbers -> just need to follow health and safety and have insurance.
https://www.gov.uk/register-a-hairdressing-business
Yeah, I think it should be easy.
I can play that game too:
"they train you not to touch things? Must be super easy, don't touch the thing."
"it's super easy not to touch the thing, we have to make chemicals touch people face safely, we don't have the luxury of just not letting the face not touch the chemical"
https://africasbesthair.com/wp-content/uploads/AB-Instructio...
You also need to know all the interactions between products, and between products and skin, and between product and skin in the context of the goal of the sitting client, which might want a color point in between two tints with reflex of another.
We're in a profession that requires next to no training (except for maybe an odd "leet code" test that has no relevance to our day-to-day work, though there are plenty of jobs that don't even need that.) Maybe we're spoiled.
- chemistry for mixing color (actually pretty complicated and depends from person to person. If you’ve ever gotten your hair colored, they have a record of your exact formula + notes).
- being able to look at random photos people bring in and reconstruct the cut on your head with your hair texture and curl characteristics.
- actually making you look good.
- learning how to use straight razor without slitting your throat.
- learning how to do all of this within a set amount of time to fit in more clients per day.
She made over $100k per year before we left the states. Her men’s cuts were like $40 or something, I’m not sure, I never paid for it, but it was more than $30. Either way, it is the best haircut I’ve ever had — she can spot “cheap” cuts a mile away (one of our first date talking points, actually). If you want to not look cheap from a distance, get a real haircut at a real barber or salon.
It took her nearly 15 years to get to that level, but she could name her price by that point and people would pay.
Straight Razor? probably should have training.
The other three? that's mostly practice. So why 1500 hours of training, and not like, 160, and have the rest be on the job?
You can only cut someone’s hair about once every six weeks, and you can’t undo a mistake. That person has to walk around with your mistake for weeks.
— my wife
But as a counterpoint, it looks like getting a tattoo artist license in Rhode Island requires only a health test and a few hundred dollars.
They all say that to establish confidence in their new client. Every time my wife goes to a new hairstylist, she comes home and says "she told me my last cut/color was horrible and I need to come back for more treatments".
My understanding is that stylists have to actually cut your hair several times to understand which parts grow faster than others and cut it in a way such that when it grows out it still looks good. I’ve definitely heard my wife tell new clients their previous stylist is excellent and ask why they are sitting in her chair, while she is flipping the hair around to reverse engineer how it was cut so she can attempt to replicate the cut.
According to my wife, “cheap” cuts don’t grow out well, the original shape isn’t held as it grows so it looks weird. If you aren’t just another body in a chair, iow, she knows how your hair grows, it will be cut so that it grows out and keeps it’s original shape.
I don’t have the figure in front of me but it is A LOT less. Maybe 400 hours?
As for the actual recent "crime waves", that is being debated to death elsewhere. Like everything, it's some of column A and some of column B and the partisan narratives distract rather than enlighten.
The incentive is that they want to be part of the "in" group and not ostracized, or worse.
E.g., if the IRS doesn't hold me accountable, there is no negative incentive to stop me from cheating on my taxes. However, I may still pay my taxes because I have a positive incentive to fund social programs I value.
https://dps.mn.gov/entity/post/becoming-a-peace-officer/Page...
ETA: per the link, the degree requirement isn't applicable to those with prior experience and having been working in police sometime in the prior six years
In my location (suburban DC), the posted requirements aren't all that high (21 years old, high school completion), but it's a competitive county (high income, relatively low crime, reasonable pay) so the majority of applicants are either college graduates OR ex-military.
What do you mean by comprehensive training? I think most states do require that, depending on the definition.
Maybe an stupid question, but where is "here"? I missed that.
Like most of these things, the headline is probably misleading. You probably spend most of the 1500 hours as an apprentice.
It doesn't sound like that bad of a gig. You can start earning a living wage right out of high school, with a guaranteed promotion into a middle class lifestyle within two years. By that time, your college going peers will be deep in debt and still two years away from a real paycheck.
Not sure the dismissive tone is warranted. It's a craft that requires skill and training. Here in Germany it's a full vocational program that generally takes three years. You can only learn so much in a year and just like in any other profession after a year you're still going to be a beginner.
It’s ultimately better for the profession and for the state, as things like sales tax collections have higher compliance rates in established businesses.
They tend to incentivize the creation of industry bodies that see that employers are collectively represented, fairly compensated and that hucksters are kept out. When people start cutting hair in their home they're not going to run fabulous businesses, they're going to look for alternatives to accredit themselves because that signal is valuable, it's how people end up at lambda school or online rating platforms.
The 'ed-tech' sector that is emerging around unregulated professions is an example of what happens if you don't have licenses. You have a vulture-like companies that offer people pseudo-qualifications without representation or any real chance to judge the standards of their education.
From the article:
> If you want to do [an apprenticeship instead of training], you will need to complete 1000 hours of training at a barbering school, along with a minimum of 840 hours of on-the-job training.
> If you want to complete a barber apprenticeship to fulfill your educational requirements, you will need to become registered as a barber apprentice with the Rhode Island Board. You do this by submitting the Rhode Island Barber Apprentice Application. Once registered, you will need to work full-time under the direct supervision of a licensed barber for two full years.
> The Rhode Island Board allows you to mix formal education and apprenticeship experience, as well. If you want to do this, you will need to complete 1000 hours of training at a barbering school, along with a minimum of 840 hours of on-the-job training.
The options are 2 full years as an apprentice, OR 1000 hours of training + 840 hours as an apprentice.
What does that even mean?!
That whole page just makes me not want to join a barber school!
Not sure "WASP-y" applies much of anywhere in Rhode Island. It's reportedly[0] the most Roman Catholic state in the U.S.
Providence strikes me as similar to most other small-medium cities with universities.
The folks I've met from the rural areas (mostly Exeter, Charlestown area) seem pretty much like people I've met in other rural areas in New England. I.e., more likely to lean conservative, more self-reliant for daily needs, etc.
[0] https://www.wpri.com/news/eyewitness-news-investigates/ri-re...
It definitely does. Barrington, East Greenwich, North Kingstown, Tiverton, Newport, and (parts of) Providence are very white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. Also relatively high Jewish populations.
Rural RI (and most of rural southern New England) is definitely "more" conservative than the suburbs, but it's nothing compared to Rural USA. There's a bit of self-reliance theater going on. Rural northern New Englanders are a bit more committed.
And then there's Warwick, Cranston, Johnston, North Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls. Long history of Italian and Portuguese culture, and the attendant Catholicism.
Rhode Island is an interesting mix of cultures. It's also quite beautiful. Most visitors have only seen it from I-95 between NYC and Boston, which is by far the least attractive way to see the area.
I miss RI pizza and seafood terribly. Nowhere else in the US really compares. However, I make the conscious trade for better Mexican and Asian food!
Most of what I've had there is pretty generic. Is there something special around Federal Hill or something?
The pace is slow (in Bristol, you're not really a 'native Bristolian' unless you have six generations' worth of ancestry in and around town); but it is happening.
https://www.ausbildung.de/berufe/friseur/
The same is true for many other professions.
"...in the USA."
I wonder if, when some teacher eventually does go on a spree, the training will allow them to rationally kill more 'than would have been previously expected".
Additional gun question. In religious schools would nuns, for example, be expected to be armed?
Probably not. Most of the training is about use of force and very basic marksmanship.
"Additional gun question. In religious schools would nuns, for example, be expected to be armed?"
No one is being expected to be armed. It's optional/voluntary.
I would imagine that many people don't see it as a huge issue given that 25+ states don't require training to carry a gun in public; that school children are also in the public areas where those people carry; and that there are exceptionally few issues with those carrying a gun legally, even more so in the context of school children being affected. Add to that the idea that if a teacher can't be trusted/responsible with a weapon around a child (responsibility could include choosing not to carry if they don't feel competent), then they probably don't have the trust/responsibility necessary to be a teacher in general.
The predominate threat of guns to children is that they gain unsupervised access to one. I imagine/hope that a large part of the training focuses on that. No leaving it in a purse/desk/etc.
It wasn't a 700 hour training program for teachers to use guns. It was a peace officer training course (Law Enforcement Officer). Maybe 24 hours isn't enough, but that's 3 days of coursework normally. As opposed to 4.5 months of training (that's probably unpaid, which really amounts to: no one took it).
Also keep in mind that a lot of work on hair can be complicated using dangerous chemicals. If you're a guy who just gets a trim or buzz cut every month you may not appreciate this. A relaxer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxer appointment can take a couple hours and cost well over $100 not including tip even at a run-of-the-mill place. The chemicals can burn skin, or damage hair that took years to grow. Now consider hairdressers need to learn this, and colorizing, and a ton of other things, for many different hair types. This all takes time.
The idea that barber/cosmetologist training is some kind of cartel situation is absurd. They make around $20-30/hour.
Most of the money in hairdressing is in the complicated stuff. People do this because they want to make a career of it. Maybe you're imagining some kind of two week training program which outputs someone who does nothing but run a clipper over people's heads all day for $5 each. The economics and incentives for that don't make sense to me. People who want ultra cheap cuts will probably just buy their own clippers anyway.
Specific example: most people expect a basic haircut for a man to trim around the ears. If I never trim around the ears then maybe I'm being safe, but you can't say I give a safe haircut because I'm not even giving a haircut as most people expect it. In particular I'm avoiding one of the most dangerous parts. You need to watch me trim around the ears in a minimally correct way to make sure I know how to do it safely.
You can give an absolutely crappy haircut in a perfectly Safe Way.
I don't think you'll be able to convince me that someone needs 1500 hours of training to give a buzz cut.
I also don't think you can convince me my barber needs to be able to do every possible hair procedure in order to give me a buzz cut
I'm not trying to convince you that a hairdresser needs 1500 hours of training to give a buzz cut.
I'm not trying to convince you that your barber needs to be able to do every possible hair procedure to give you a buzz cut. We could have barbers who are only licensed to do buzz cuts. We don't have them though because no one wants them to exist, not the barbers, schools, salons, public or government. Consider that being a barber who only gives buzz cuts is like being a programmer who only writes web-scraping scripts on freelance sites. They could exist though, theoretically.
We don't know that because it is illegal. Most men cut use Clippers and scissors. There are businesses that operate all day doing these haircuts. You can teach someone how not to cut an ear off, poke an eye out with scissors and clippers very quickly. There is no regulatory middle option. Even if there is no demand, there could still be a regulatory middle option.
* Idaho has "Barber – Barber-stylist 1800 hours; Barber (no chemicals) 900 hours"
* Wyoming has "Barber – 1250 hours with chemical services, 1000 without chemical services"
Maybe 900 or 1000 hours still seems like a lot to you, I don't know. Given the politics of these states it's unlikely their governments are being strong-armed by labor cartels or over-regulating on general principle.
A lot of the training is hands-on. It's a trade school. You're not spending a entire month studying the theory of scissors, you're spending a lot of that time working on many customers under supervision. Even a simple haircut for a man might take a professional 20 minutes. A more complex cut can take longer. A student can take twice as long as a professional. It all takes time. It's a lot of work. I don't know what you can cut out without reducing quality. The fact that all states have converged on similar requirements supports that.
This situation exists because barbers managed to organize enough to get their profession enshrined in law in a way that protects their wages. Making a skilled but underpaid profession into a reasonably well paid one.
If the US had decent baseline wages and protections for workers, barbers wouldn't have to go to great lengths to protect themselves at the cost of stupid hoops for anyone trying to enter the profession.
It's like in a western, where some town on the frontier - ignored by the government and civil society - turns to a gang of outlaws for protection. Extreme circumstances lead to extreme solutions.
Judging from https://www.barber-license.com/ and clicking state by state, the VAST majority of states have 1000+ hour licensing programs. States that don't have an explicit n-hours requirement have wording like "Graduate from a New York State–Approved Barber School" which doesn't sound too different.
And just because someone implements a bad idea doesn't make it "normal"
The government is doing this largely due to a single reason. Barbers/hairdressers are extremely unhealthy to your population. You practically can't have barbers in your society and socialized medicine. It's more of an either or situation.
Lets compare and contrast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PGEY2vt1mg
Traditional korean barber shave. Teapot from disgusting water reservoir? You're getting covid, hiv, and monkeypox from the lather off the side of the stock pot. The standard straight razor with strop? Just look at all the rot? decay?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDlyY63V0Us
Id venture to guess even this mask wearing, glove wearing, perfectly clean, replaceable blades that throw out the hiv from the last client they cut. No lather of death bacteria. Barbecide exists!
Ill tell you though, the korean shave will be 100x better.