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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.