Licensing
You know, if someone’s job is to get naked in front of people, it seems pretty straightforward. I, wanting to see that person naked walk up and offer my money and in exchange, they get naked. Apparently, this requires a state license:
The dancers and the club manager were arrested for doing business without a license. Sellers said dancers are licensed to work at a specific club, and these dancers were not licensed for the Black Magic Club. “A lot of these places bring dancers in from outside of Birmingham,” Sellers said.
And you need a license per location. As someone who has license or two, they’re getting pointless. The licenses used to act as a check that someone has met certain qualifications in technical field or vocation (accountants, hairdresser, etc.). Now they act as revenue measures and a sort of punishment.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:11 am
Welcome to the licence raj, american style. We need to pushback on these things, hard.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:23 am
The qualification thing was always a smokescreen for the primary purpose of restricting competition. Now cash starved governments are turning to them for extra revenue.
Just proves that the government strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to screw you too.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:17 am
Glad Birmingham PD has all the other crime under control so they can concentrate on something as important as this.
May 21st, 2012 at 11:43 am
The Shampoo folks at my wife’s salon has to be licensed. Really, a license to apply shampoo to someone’s hair. They only work on tips and possibly minimum wage, why a license. $$$$$$ is why!!
May 21st, 2012 at 11:55 am
Can you show me your blogging license before I turn you in?
May 21st, 2012 at 12:03 pm
I have my blogging license right here. It weighs 180 grains, and is encased in a brass casing. It is propelled by 5.2 grains of W231 propellant, and out of a 4″ barrel, will get to the inspector’s waiting hand at about 1050 feet per second.
May 21st, 2012 at 1:07 pm
This sort of thing is, oddly enough what the Glorious Revolution in the UK was about.
May 21st, 2012 at 1:09 pm
VERY old issue. Seattle was licensing “seamstresses” before the turn of the twentieth century. The downtown wharf area had something like 550 licensed “seamstresses” although only 2 or so had sewing machines! I guess all those sailors needed lots of hand sewn new clothes!
The train, she is a coming, she’s coming round the bend!
May 21st, 2012 at 2:11 pm
Bill, they had to get licensed. Mrs. Palm and the Agony Aunts had definite Views about unlicensed seamstressing outside the protection of the Guild.
Wait, am I confusing Seattle with Anhk-Morpork again?
If so, could I get the Patrician in exchange for Mayor Mike?
May 21st, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Bill and Tirno, it isn’t that getting a license as a seamstress is actually mandatory, or even all that difficult. It is just that the penalties, should the licensed seamstresses find out you are “darning” without a license, are really unpleasant. At least in Anhk-Morpork.
There are ways around such idiocracy.
I remember when Nixon (or was it Ford?) laid on price controls for certain cuts of beef. Sirloin steaks suddenly disappeared from the butcher’s section of the Winn Dixie, and “London Broil” at a price much higher than allowed for sirloin was available all the time.
Who is to say that you are operating a hair salon and not, say, a carwash for convertibles only, that is completely unregulated?
May 21st, 2012 at 3:28 pm
@Tirno: I’d rather have the Patrician than any of the leaders we have now. At least he’s open about the fact that he’s a tyrant, and as a bonus, he really is a benevolent one (unless you’re a mime, and even then he takes care of you). Unfortunately, he’s even more anti-gonne than Bloomers.
May 21st, 2012 at 5:26 pm
What alan said – for the most part, licensing regimes have always been about rent-seeking by the existing industry, to keep competition down, rather than real qualification.
May 21st, 2012 at 10:53 pm
Attempts to license dancers in Oregon ran afoul of Oregon’s freedom of speech laws.
Entertainers in Oregon can do anything as long as they don’t touch the audience.
This even included a live sex scene in the shower during a live murder mystery that was played out in the Pittock Mansion live some years back.