This thread has inspired me next year I’ll let my license lapse and stop paying fees, city, state, and local taxes, insurance…
Then I’ll be able to be competitive with these craigslist cowboys who undercut all the people doing business legally.
We are not talking huge corporations here people. We are talking about the people who own small businesses in your area who are feeling the squeeze from all these fly by nights undercutting them.
African hair braiding
lmfao. This has been a completely bizarre Reason/Libertarian thing for years. Hey, doncha know that a bunch of creepy white neoconfederates who get their seed money from the Koch Bros. really CARE about black women… BARF…
And screw Radley Balko… ungh…
Rats. There goes my chance to give an unlicensed contractor an excessive downpayment for the quality work he was going to do. I’ll really miss their illegal advertising, too. I’ll be sure to send a letter of complaint to my state representative right after I get my African hair braid and my fish pedicure from this guy my bookie introduced me to. Damn consumer regulations, getting in the way of free enterprise.
It’s amazing what you learn from people who get one hell of a lot of money to publish their magazine, videos and website from a Koch-funded charity.
So, jobs and opportunities are being offered in industries that prey on less powerful industries which also happen to provide opportunities and employment. The powerful industries are authoritarian in nature. And they criminalize and disenfranchise great swathes of our population who may be more creative, more talented, skilled in craft, who provide services and products that have traditional roots, and who do little to no harm.
I wonder if the end result will be that the Winston Smiths and the (full-witted) Chauncey Gardeners will have no other place to work than for the A(uthoritarian) companies.
As the former owner of two successful small/medium businesses with a third ready to go with business plan in hand, I find this trend more than disheartening, and utterly terrifying in its implications.
These days I am continually reminded of Borges’ quote: “In time, one inevitably comes to resemble one’s enemies.” The US has been blessed with natural resources and material conditions that allow for their easy extraction, as well as a climate suited to overabundance. All of this on an artificially clean slate worked for centuries by the cheapest labor, yet we continue to grow to resemble the Soviet Union-- in secrecy, in surveillance, in hypocrisy, in our disrespect for our own citizens and their fundamental right to privacy, in our disrespect for other nations, and above all, in our addiction to incarceration and control, and the profit they offer in dozens of ancillary industries. It’s a terrifying, revolting condition and one that won’t be easily or quickly escaped.
There is nothing libertarian about supporting capitalism.
http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/150-years-of-libertarian
Sounds a bit like socialism to me.
Sure is a good thing that this raid was aimed at those pesky benefits frauds… Oh, wait, it wasn’t. The crime was being an unlicensed tradesman. Do you think that professional licensure bodies (especially ones with comparatively long times-between-renewal) actually exist to keep benefits frauds away?
But, but . . . NANNY STATE! NANNY STATE!!!
Man, that’s pretty flat-footed stuff. Once again, arch conservatives demonstrate how bad they are at producing “hip” and “with it” humor.
I sincerely hope you feel the same way about billionaire tax-evaders and inside traders.
So, if you are able to pay for a license you are a better qualified for having paid for it?
Perhaps it could be enforced by community service instead. You know, like painting a school or something.
Well, I don’t actually care about the insider trading; but I’ve heard that many insider traders may be cocaine users, which would definitely justify a raid, according to the non-sequitor theory of policing…
Would a Tea Party rant actually be against putting some poor, quite possibly illegal, ethnic undesirables in their place?
Can you find me actual examples of your scary stories? You know, one person who got their house set on fire by an illegal contractor, or lost their home because of an uninsured worker? But you know, even if these kinds of things happen once in a blue moon, I suspect that the harm caused by arresting literally hundreds of illegal workers would still be far greater. There is a middle ground, too: the state can issue licenses (and even a snazzy logo) and only allow licensed contractors to advertise themselves as such. Or they could even go further and force unlicensed contractors to explicitly identify themselves as such. People could put whatever weight they cared to on the licensing…
If they don’t exist, no one will miss them…
But that’s the worst part of unlicensed contractors is that 99% of the time the liability falls back on the homeowner (and absolutely should have fallen on the apartment complex). This sounds like a serious attempt to change those numbers.
Why would a Tea Party rant need to be logically consistent? This is anti-regulation without contemplating any of the consequences: sounds about right to me.
Unfortunately, Arborist certification is not required in California (though trimming street trees here in LA requires both a permit and consultation with a certified Arborist).
It’s a sickness - people come to LA and buy these gorgeous old properties with hundred-year-old trees - which aren’t exactly common around here - and then decide they want “more light.”
So they pay some low-bid crew of chain-saw-wielding hack’n’slashers to “open up” the tree - and they reduce it to a pathetic, deformed skeleton of its former magnificence.
Three years later, when the stress takes its toll and the tree starts to die of fungus invasion or pests, or drops a large branch weakened by rot from the improper trimming - they sigh about “how sad it is that trees don’t live forever”, and pay some other low-bid crew to cut it down.
Then they stack its sectioned carcass in a great pile in the back yard for firewood (which they never use because they’d have to split it, and the pre-split stuff at WalMart is really cheap).
And every now and then, when a visitor remarks on their impressive (and now rat-infested) pile of firewood, they’ll reminisce nostalgically about that great old tree that, sadly, died.
It’s a sickness.
The California government can’t make their minds up whether they want to be Nazis or liberals.
[shudder]
I think it’s a $1700 fine (per tree) if you do that to trees on the street side of your property in SF. It’s somewhat inconsistently enforced, but you can call it in to 311, and the city likes the extra money.
