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Comment by nika | Hacker News Reader

Sigh. This reminds me of the story about the poor guy in San Francisco who developed a small business (selling flowers? shining shoes? can't remember) but was caught and fined and made homeless (he'd just put down a deposit on an apartment) by the city because he didn't have a business permit.

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Good memory!

You're thinking of Larry, the shoe-shine guy: http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-06-04/news/17208451_1_larry-...

The local media indeed jumped on it, and raised a stink.

Thanks for digging up that link. Larry got taken care of because of the stink, but here are thousands of other stories of a similar nature, up and down the spectrum. Many small businesses started by "amateurs" run afoul of regulations, or simply discover that the tax burden is too much in the early days. Once when I started a small business it turned out I'd located my office in a special tax zone that wanted %3 of all revenue earned by the business.

I have a friend who spent 4 days in jail because he was caught near a bar without a drivers license. He didn't have ID, couldn't prove who he was and got locked up. They didn't let him make a phone call, and he stayed there until they decided he'd "learned his lesson". This one was sometimes homeless, but not a drunk or drug user. Just lost his ID.

Here in Uruguay* we have a reasonably good solution, it's a "flat tax" (currently U$ 50/month) that includes healthcare as a benefit, which makes it very useful for a one-man business - for example, most window cleaners, car parkers and other "almost-beggars" pay this tax (the maximum income for the business is U$ 25.000 gross yearly).

It's called "Monotributo", if you speak Spanish look it up.

(*I believe the same works in Argentina)

Wait... what? To me, that just sounds evil. Why shouldn't I be able to walk around without any form of identification?

I genuinely want to know - is it really mandatory to have some form of identification on you at all times? Sometimes I just don't - should I worry?

No one is required to have ID in the US. In general, we have considered "papers please" to be a form of fascism.

However, that does not mean the police won't put you in jail for not having ID, though they have to let you out eventually. This has happened to me.

At this point in the discussion someone cites the Hiibel decision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiibel_v._Sixth_Judicial_Distri...

That decision is that states with stop and identify laws, can require someone to identify themself when there is "reasonable suspicion" a crime has occured, which is also knowns as a Terry stop. The decision does not say you have to have government ID in those states. It says you have to identify yourself. It is sufficient to state your name and birth date for these purposes.

Again, that doesn't mean police will follow the law. Most of them don't.

It's very easy to start a new business in the US. Heck we have websites now that automate the process. And actually it's pretty easy to avoid/minimize taxes in the first few years, when there's little/no/negative income. Yes, some regulation are probably too much. Yes healthcare is too expensive and employers probably should not be mandated to be involved in it. But to say that all regulations are bad, just because some may be, is a leap one cannot make.

Seems like something over which the local media would be quite willing to raise a stink.

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