Well, this salon became so popular, the other hair salons tried to put it out of business. Not by offering a better product, of course, but by using their cronies at the city bureaucracy to red-tape it to death. The city tried to make the salon’s owner get a cosmetology license, which would have cost $5,000 and required employees to take more than 1,000 hours of courses at a beauty school.

So what’s the problem? Cosmetology licenses are required to cut, wash, dye, etc. hair. Not to braid it. In fact, cosmetology classes didn’t even cover hair braiding! This poor store owner was going to be forced by the government to get a license that didn’t even cover anything his business sold!

Luckily common sense prevailed, but only after the aggrieved owner took the city to Federal Court! It just goes to show you what lengths government will go to to be in charge of everything it can. Remember kids- they know better than store owners, businessmen, consumers, and everyone else, ‘cuz they’re the government and they’re here to protect us.

The law was almost certainly pushed by a cosmetology association in an effort to control prices and wages by “leveling the playing field” and requiring the same amount of certification to do absolutely anything in the field.

It happens all the time. My company provides lighting services to retailers. In an effort to keep us “scabs” from changing light bulbs in Massachusetts, the electrical unions banded together and got a law passed requiring anyone who works on an electrical fixture to have a license. It didn’t drive us out of business but it did drive up the costs for our customers tremendously and has required our customers to further raise prices on their customers and the “prell effect” has continued all the way up the chain.

It’s one of those nifty things folks do to “protect” their interest by using the legislature…

In fact, it’s one of the main reasons I became a libertarian. I like my playing field to be “actually level”

However, as its described here, it sounds like the law would hurt the industry. Who would spend 1500 hours training for a job that probably pays squat?