Don't forget your permit!

I came a across this story of a homeless San Franciso man who was trying to improve his situation through hard work, shining shoes so he could pay the first month's rent on apartment ($600). He was up to $573, until:

Yes, god forbid we allow a homeless person to work improve his own situation. Let's knock him down with some silly ass permit law.

This has already been taken care of.

In a nutshell, the residents of SF heard about it from the media, they deluged the goverment with protests, the agency heads heard about it, and they helped the guy get set up.

Problem solved, and a nice case of the people, the government and the media working together to help.

Oh hey, I've seen that guy before.

Glad it all got worked out. Otherwise I might've had to momentarily doubt the unerring perfection of the City of San Francisco.

A few years back when I was back east around Maryland I saw a news report where the police had to shut down some kids lemon aid stand because one of their neighbors reported them not having a business permit to the police.

How did the Goverment help again? I'm not exactly clear on that.

Certain people looked the other way, didn't make him fork over the money for the permit, and drummed up some business for the guy?

Everyone knows about that one. Apparently it's happened in a lot of places; everyone has read of it happening in their own city, or knows someone who knows the people whose kids ran the stand.

Because the story has all the hallmarks of an urban legend.

The big bureaucracy going after kids for engaging in an innocent, traditional summer activity. That it seemingly happens everywhere, yet there being an astounding lack of actual evidence that it ever happened anywhere at all.

I'm looking into it right now. I don't know that it didn't happen, but so far the only things I find on it are very...untrustworthy...internet postings.

Seems like the sort of thing Snopes would handle, but they don't seem to have done so.

Read the linked SFGate article.

I did. It still looks like he's paying for the permit to me. I'm not sure how that fits into the "helping" part.

He's going to be operating on public property. He's essentially renting the space.

Why do you think he shouldn't pay rent on the space on which he is operating a (very) small business?

Why do you think other business owners should be compelled to rent/buy the property they use? Or do you think they should not, as well? In which case, how should space to operate a business be allocated?

Don't let these questions slip your mind because you're "busy". They're kind of central to the whole point.

MSNBC Video
and I think this blog is talking about the story i saw on the news.

In his libertarian fantasy, the guy would rent the street corner from SidewalkCo, a division of StreetCo, the multinational corporation that owns the street because the government only provides for military defense. But that would be better, because it's not the government, see. It's self-evident, really.

I am busy, but I'll answer them anyways *puts away fire extinguisher*.
I can see the need for a street vendor liscense (you don't want just any body selling stuff on the street), but I don't think it should be rediculously high, especially given this gentleman's situation. I think less than a hundred dollars would be approriate. I know when starting my own business I had to pay a 30$ liscense fee. So something in that area would be reasonable. But $491? C'mon!

Presumably, there is a reason akin to market forces why the fee is whatever it is. These fees aren't set arbitrarily, they're generally considered to be what's needed to help fund the department that regulates, permits, & inspects such businesses.

No one works for free & everything costs money. From the posted stories it looks like government employees actually went out of their way to help this guy out to ensure that he could operate legally within the rules. So where exactly is your government-hate coming from in this situation?

Yeah, I could probably hazard a similar guess, but my Crazy Hat is in the wash, so I can't just slip into it.

As anyone who has ever visited San Francisco would know, street performers run rampant there. I'm not sure if they fall into the same category as this shoe shining fellow, but assuming that they do, it seems within reason to charge a few hundred bucks for a license to be a street peddler since there are so many of them. So yeah, market forces are a good explanation for the high cost of the license. I'd wager that in addition to funding the bureaucracy behind it, the fees are set high to prevent the sidewalks in the touristy areas from being flooded with said vendors.

Well, if he has the ability to make over a grand in a single day, I think asking five hundred for- I'm guessing here- an annual license isn't asking a lot. It seems pretty reasonable, even given that the grand was an extremely above-average day for him. If an average day can net him even a hundred dollars (one-tenth of his best day) than he can make the cost of the license back four times in a single month's worth of work.

There are plenty of times the government fucks up, or creates unreasonable barriers to commerce. I'm just a little sick & tired of people trying to turn stories into this huge example of how all how government regulation, everywhere, all the time, is bad.

To add a few more layers to the market forces argument: That particular patch of concrete is on one of the highest-trafficked streets in the highest-trafficked neighborhood in the financial center of the western United States, which just happens to be one of the most expensive cities in the world for real estate.

So yeah. It's steep, but it's not ridiculous.

What made this situation seem unfair was the applicant's personal finances and the supposed rigidity of the government agency in question here. The rigidity was alleviated to an extent, but that doesn't mean the government should allow him to entirely side-step the other market costs that his competitors have to deal with. Why, that would be... SOCIALISM! Gasp!

If you want to make money using some of the most expensive real estate in the country, you have to pay. Downtown SF isn't second tier Virginia.

The guy wants to run a business and use a chunk of prime real estate to do so. Paying for on-street parking is also renting public space: the current rate for metered parking in downtown SF is $3/hour, $24 per 8 hour day, $720/month, $1660/yr.

What is the situation in other similarly expensive US cities? Glad you asked!

Manhattan , like SF, has very expensive real estate, and you essentialy can't get a street vending license there since the total number was capped decades ago and they stopped taking names for the waiting list in 1992.
Many vendors resort to renting someone else's cart and license on the black market, which is illegal and costs about $3,000/yr. On top of that, the average vendor in NYC pays $433/yr in fines since there are so many regulations.

Makes that $491 annual permit look cheap by comparison.

So it's not an issue of needing a license that you object to, after all.

It's the size of the fee -- which is an entirely empirical issue (not one of principle), for which you have provided no benchmarking at all.

Huh. What a surprise.

So, let me guess, if someone points out that if these offices weren't supported by fees, they would have to be supported by taxes, you'd say the offices shouldn't exist. What happens when someone opens a slaughterhouse next to your apartment because there's no hated government interference?

Let's face it, like most "libertarians" you like to enjoy all of the benefits of big government but none of the attendant costs.

And you don't see anything wrong with that?

The principle is that he was being taking for almost everything he's got. It's funny, if this were an Evil Corporation, I'm sure everyone would be taking the position that I am now. But no, when it's the Government, you all come rushing to it's defense!

Oh puh-lease!

If this were an Evil Corporation charging a homeless guy for a permit to shine shoes, yeah, we'd probably be critical.

But we're not "defending the government". If you were less stupid, you wouldn't even try to fly that argument.

We've all been noting that there was a widespread reaction to this man's plight. Perhaps you need to read the thread again.

We've also agreed on the principle -- and this includes you -- that the government has a right to charge people for running a business on a public street.

Jesus. Are you this dumb in real life?