> 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.

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.

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?

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.

> Do these businesses really even need to exist? They themselves are a racket. They're just overhead.

They exist because people like convenience and ease of discovery.

They don’t “need” to exist. They exist because there’s demand and they’re filling it.

There are already many options from hair stylists operating out of their home. People can already choose one or the other.

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.

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.