Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why is it that it takes 1000 hours of study to cut people's hair... Protectionism by a de facto trade guild was always my assumption. There are a lot of activities where bad practitioners present significant danger to society and licensure makes sense. I never understood how cutting hair rises to that level. I'd love to know how licensure in the barber profession is anything other than a bald-faced attempt at build…
> It seems like the market could correct for a bad practitioner in the barber space pretty easily, Why do you assume that? I bet most people don't know their barber personally, and just go to the shop to get a cut. Should getting a haircut be fraught with having to go online and read a bunch of reviews, followed by the inevitable bickering between fake reviews and fake responses on top of that? No, I just want to get…
My wife and her friends make personal recommendations about stylists frequently. My male friends either go to chain barber shops or they have a personally-known barber (and, in one case when an older barber retired he gave personal recommendations for a new barber). At least in semi-rural Western Ohio I see a lot of word-of-mouth for barbers. I'm an oldster (48), though, so I don't know how the youth handle this. (I also haven't participated personally because I haven't had a haircut in 30+ years...)