Comment by dt3ft | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dt3ft | Hacker News Reader

Here is a summary from the Louis Rossmann YT comment:

To answer some common questions:

a) I have already emailed & called, and I patiently await a reply...

b) You can't re-renew with a 13 month old PIN if you already renewed.

c) You can't show up in person without an appointment.

d) Appointments are only granted by means of contact that don't reply.

e) Yes I have two other licenses that AREN'T expired, but those are useless, they are for selling laptops, not fixing laptops, which I don't do anymore anyway after the city was unable to give me a straight answer on how to do so without being fined: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8_9WGk3Ok - I need this license in the video to be able to actually do repairs.

f) Just listen to this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8_9WGk3Ok This is what I am dealing with. After 15+ minutes and being transferred to two people, they can't answer a basic question about a rule they fined me for breaking that they can't even explain. They never emailed or called me back, which has been the behavior I have come to expect over the past nine years.

I am serious, if you work for the city and have any way of applying my 13 month old payment to this license renewal, you have the gratitude of myself & 14 of my employees who will get to continue paying their rents, mortgages, & food bill for their kids.

In spite of what people think, I am not a millionaire. If I'm forced to close - I can't afford to pay these people. I do not want that to happen.

I am not meming, I never get responses to DCA emails - not 3 months ago, not for NINE YEARS, and I don't expect to be able to now. Since I cannot sort this out in person due to the COVID closures, this channel is my only hope of reaching someone who can help me sort this out.

> c) You can't show up in person without an appointment.

> d) Appointments are only granted by means of contact that don't reply.

Similar thing happened to me recently with the IRS. Got a notice about them needing to verify my identity and gave me a number to call. Had been calling for months and would always get a message saying they were too busy and to try the following day. After trying a few other options to no avail, I decided to show up at my local IRS office without an appointment (which I couldn’t get anyway). They first turned me down, then told me that maybe if I waited for a few hours they might be able to see me at the end of the day, then after about 20min and them clearly not being busy, they talked to me and was able to resolve the issue within 15min.

So, even though I was told I couldn’t show up without an appointment, and they tried turning me down, just by being there they finally paid attention to me. Yes, it was uncomfortable and annoying to have to do that, but it worked.

If you have a moment, please call the IRS' Customer Advocacy Department to file a complaint regarding this. Gotta be the squeaky wheel.

https://www.irs.gov/advocate/the-taxpayer-advocate-service-i...

please hold while we connect you to the IRS customer advocacy department...

Same thing with Global Entry. Partner was stressed because it expired, no appoints, etc. Flew through a location w/ Global Entry and went there at open, in and out in 15 min; poof, TSA PRE worked next day.

Yup. Showing up is basically always a thing, because even if it’s not an official channel, you’ll end up bothering someone until they help you solve the problem.

And I think most people want to help others, but even if they’re selfish and don’t care about helping anyone, they’ll help you if you’re persistent and physically present.

Like the classic parable of the persistent widow: Luke 18:2-5

“He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. 3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ 4 For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’”

I guess this is one critique of exclusive remote working: it’s pretty easy to end up ghosted by someone in the approval chain for something.

> I guess this is one critique of exclusive remote working: it’s pretty easy to end up ghosted by someone in the approval chain for something.

This! If you've never worked in a very large organization, it's a huge pro to working in the office that can be overlooked.

Disappears if that person is working remotely.

You can visit their manager.

and if they're the one doing it?

This is a very real problem in large organizations. I’ve found an effective alternative while working remote is to escalate to my manager in such situations. Usually they have a little more organizational clout and can get a response.

Unless it's _really_ a very large organization where the person or team you need to contact is often in a different building, city, state, or country...

> you’ll end up bothering someone until they help you solve the problem

Haha, I discovered that with my bank. Phone calls were just dismissed with "we can't do anything about it" or getting repeatedly "transferred" to a dial tone.

Showing up and sitting in the branch manager's office until he fixed the problem worked. It was a $600 problem so it was worth the effort.

It's probably modernizing now, but I talked with someone in Argentina many years ago about paying bills and doing banking. They said that the only way to do any of this stuff is to show up in person at the bank, at the utility company, etc. Showing up in person is a developing country's cheap authentication hack as criminal fraud very rarely gets punished and fraud over the telephone is just too easy.

It's quite the opposite, I'm not sure when your anecdote occurred, but everything can be paid online directly through your bank or using payment facilitators. It's been this way for years.

Even things like wire transfers between individuals can be done instantly directly through your banking app/website, where my bank in the US requires me to go to a branch and wait 3-5 days.

> Showing up and sitting in the branch manager's office until he fixed the problem worked. It was a $600 problem so it was worth the effort.

After being on hold for >1h, I went to my local bank branch. The manager told me they could only call the same support line. I was sure they must have an internal path to resolve things. He denied that this was an option. I don’t know if I believe that, as it seems unlikely.

The bank manager gave me that line, too. I didn't believe it, either. Eventually, he elliptically hinted something along the lines that if I said it was fraud, he might be able to do something.

Naturally, I then declared it to be fraud.

As long as you don't have one of those online-only amounts BofA has. ATM access and the account are free, but visiting the teller is not. I'm not sure if they actually offer it anymore, as I closed my accounts with them several years ago. I recall having great difficulty disabling overdraft protection (to me, the whole point of a debit card is not spending money that I don't have--if my balance is too low for my purchase, I want it rejected).

Details: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bank-of-america-to-offer-free-o...

True unfortunately. My organization is very much an in person organization that has gone remote with some processes that were still mediated by paper forms. The previous advice for getting certain signatures and approvals was to stand outside a particular execs office and haranguing them through persistence. This is no longer an option nor easily replaced through readily ignored channels.

(This is not a method I would elect, but dysfunction begets dysfunction.)

My city hall closed for Covid.

I yanked at the door until it opened. Walked in and found employees to deal with…

Even if doors are closed and locked, showing up can still get the job done.

So you broke in through a locked door? That doesn't sound like a good way to get help, you could have also ended up in jail.

My local DMV is amazing at ignoring, insulting, and attacking people who just "show up" and ask for help with a process.

IANAL but I mean if they say the way to notify them is to call them, and they don't respond to that call, the onus is on them, no?

I would think that you did your due diligence by calling and that it's their fault at that point.

Also, calling should never be a requirement. What if someone is deaf? Requiring someone to call without an online alternative should 100% be an ADA violation.

I'm dealing with similar issues regarding a lost package through the USPS. The sender assured me they had updated my address but sent it to the old one anyway and then got lost.

I filled out the online form for missing packages and it said someone would follow up on the ticket number. No one did. I called the main USPS number and got through to an operator. They said someone should have followed up and then created a new ticket number. Still no follow up.

I called again and they gave me the number for some major customer affairs center (forget the name). First time the voicemail was full, second time I left a message but never heard back.

The local post office finally did call me back ... from an Unknown number (WTF?) so I didn't pick it up, then left a vague message about the package and said to call back the local post office number.

Every time I've tried to call that number it just stays on hold and then goes to a busy signal.

I’m dealing with an issue with western union. Well was, I’ve given up. For over a year I’ve been using WU to send money back for my helper to the Philippines. So she didn’t need to go to the crowded mall on the other side of singapore to send it.

No issues for over a year sending to her husband. Then one day I’m told he’s not allowed to receive money.

I call WU. They say he can receive. I send money and WU cancels it. I call again, they said he needs to call. He calls and they say there’s no issues. I call they say no issue. WU cancels when he attempts to collect.

I call again they said I need to contact GCR department. 2 months they won’t reply. Emailed several times. Called again. Talked to WU on Twitter, everyone tells me to contact gcr. No one will reply.

Black hole support systems.

have you tried Singtel Dash? seems to work.

Does transferwise work there? It's worked great for me and the fees are transparent and low.

Don't know, never heard of that one.

Update: The package was finally delivered, yesterday (July 12), original delivery attempt June 1st.

Contact your senior U.S. Senators office. They have contacts that will get things moving for you.

Works much more often that you would expect.

In 2017 I had a problem with back taxes and the IRS was threatening to come after me. I couldn’t get them on the phone and it was important enough that I didn’t want to wait to resolve it via mail. I contacted my US congressperson and complained that they were making it impossible to work out an arrangement, and the fact that I wanted to give them money & couldn’t call them was ridiculous. A senior aide got back to me pretty quickly, and offered to help. Instead of relying on snail mail and nonfunctional phone calls, I was able to resolve the entire process via email and a couple phone calls with the aide. It was great, and I highly recommend giving it a try.

Same here. I was dealing with back taxes but some of my former banks wouldn't send me old account statements for a variety of bullshit reasons or they wanted to charge obscene amounts for them. After one email to my Congressman, an aide forwarded it to the CFPB and I got calls from bank representatives within three days asking for my mailing address - didn't even bother charging a reasonable amount for shipping and handling (I asked).

I think I need to emphasize this since many on HN are immigrants: Congresscritters don't care if you're eligible to vote or not (I wasn't). Hell, half the time they don't even care if you're in their district because they're in a safe seat that can only be practically challenged by someone local who can pull donors away. A letter advocating for some policy position that's decided by realpolitik anyway usually just get a form response, but an reasonable letter from a constituent asking for actionable help will almost always get the white glove treatment.

This reminds me of dealing with immigration. I was supposed to get an “alien registration number” when I arrived in the USA on an immigrant via, yet for some reason I did not.

No one would talk to me, not matter how many times I explained for three months. I eventually took to driving to the INS building every single day until they finally gave up and issued me a number within 20 minutes.

Three months of not being allowed to work nor being able to leave the country was frustrating in the extreme.

Anyway, apparently the right way to deal with this is to contact your representative (for me it was a congressman or senator, for this guy their state-level person) and ask them to help.

Yes, the rep may help, but that too will possibly be a brick wall. The best method is to show up, tell them you'll wait, then continue to stand there staring at them.

I am in exactly this situation (but at the days/weeks timescale instead of months), so thanks for posting how you resolved this, I'll try my local IRS office.

That's why I'll never use a virtual bank, I need one with branches just for that time something breaks.

In this case he's saying

> since I cannot sort this out in person due to the COVID closures

...which I interpret as "the office I would go to to sort this out is empty; there is nobody there; the lights are off and the doors are locked. Everyone who would be working there is working from home."

Also call your local councilman. They have staff who will at least attempt to deal with the issue. It helps.

This is good advice.

That said, you shouldn't have to call up a politician and beg in order to get government departments to perform functions that they are supposed to be performing.

If you have some ultra-edge case involving your deceased uncle's estate's something or other it can be understandable. But this should be a routine business transaction and the city is incapable of making it happen. He's trying to give them a large amount of money FFS, you'd think they'd accept it and then do the menial amount of work to make the records on their end reflect that.

That's all pretty much ass-backwards. It'd be wildly inappropriate and unethical if a city councilman could somehow sway the settlement of an estate, which is the province of the court.

Getting things moving in city hall's bureaucracy is in the councilman's remit, as is improving the state of the bureaucracy to prevent further problems in the future. They might not be the ideal person to handle anything in particular, but they should sure know who to talk to, and they should make time to do it.

I just had an issue where I couldn’t get an appointment for a city service because of COVID, got ahold of my councilman and was there in 2 weeks. This is definitely what he should do.

This is why I think that if there has to be an unfixable Kafkaesque bureaucracy, I'd rather it be in the public sector rather than a monopoly in the private sector.

There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast. But I've seen appeals to elected officials fix lots of issues with government bureaucracy.

> There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast

Because of its presence on public utility poles, there is a lot that they can do about Comcast. Many people prevail getting Comcast to do stuff by writing cities. The problem is the cushy job Comcast gives people after a long stint in government service in favor of Comcast. That shit isn’t a conspiracy.

> That shit isn’t a conspiracy

What is it then?

Corruption.

Are these mutually exclusive?

Conspiracy seem to be a type of corruption to me in many cases.

I think GP meant to say "isn't a conspiracy theory" rather than "isn't a conspiracy" eg. that isn't some hare-brained idea that only the craziest kook would subscribe to. Conspiracies certainly happen all the time. The most successful ones are probably never theorized about!

A private sector business isn't gonna send thugs with guns to forcibly shut down your business and put you in a cage after being too incompetent to take your money, they're just gonna terminate your service and/or sue you. Which is worse is a matter of preference.

This exactly.

Debt collectors may not be able to put you in jail, but 'thugs with guns' can be a pretty apt description otherwise.

You are of course entirely correct (well, outside of the mob, which is probably a realistic factor for quite a bit of business, but kind of out of scope for "rules").

However, the essence of the matter isn't just about putting you in a cage - it's about excessive and capricious penalties with no real recourse. And those exist aplenty in the private sector. Nor do all laws broken necessarily equate to imprisonment.

In practice, for perceived infractions against whatever rules the powerful organization has, private organizations are pretty ruthless up to but not quite reaching imprisonment. Pseudo-monopolists cutting service, or hefty financial penalties up to and including losing pretty much everything, holding your data hostage: that's all fair game.

These two things aren't the same; but I do think they're both bad and scary enough to warrant not just concern, but in an ideal world, rules. You know, for example, constraints for government, and licensing rules for business.

I think as a corollary it’s important to remember that “A private sector business isn't gonna send thugs with guns” wasn’t always true. Private police pushing people around was common enough in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was laws and government intervention that stopped that.

>A private sector business isn't gonna send thugs with guns to forcibly shut down your business and put you in a cage after being too incompetent to take your money, they're just gonna terminate your service and/or sue you.

Historically speaking this is completely false. Even now you can find individual examples of businesses doing things like this, especially in places with little rule of law.

There is nothing magical about businesses - they are made up of the same people that make up governments. Those people have the same power trips regardless of their positions.

And how many people bemoaning this situation in these comment threads will turn right around and advocate for more professional license requirements in some other comment thread.

You can't have the good without the bad. I'd like to see those people come out and say these are acceptable losses.

I think I'm the typical person you're inviting to say it and I will: those are acceptable losses. Whenever you want a new licensing scheme, you have to balance the gains with the losses.

For example, my city had an issue where donation boxes would pop up on city lots next to parks and become dumpsters. The city implemented a licensing scheme, which forced the companies and non-profits to collect from the boxes at a regular frequency, and now the problem is solved. No bags of old books left soaking in the rain turning into useless pulp. But someone could argue the licensing scheme stops some non-profits from collecting much needed donations. It totally does, but it's worth it.

It would also be nice if those who oppose licensing suggested credible alternatives.

As your anecdote suggested, licenses are typically implemented for a reason. Quite often those reasons deal with people who are taking advantage of a situation, with little regard to the interests of others or even the legality of their actions. I will admit that licenses can be problematic, but I honestly cannot think of a good alternative so I support licensing as the best option we have available at present.

>It would also be nice if those who oppose licensing suggested credible alternatives.

Credible alternative: don't have licenses. They're not a gift from god. Businesses existed before them and continue to exist without them. Can there be a quality problem? Sure, but consumer protection laws will apply regardless of licenses.

Don't have mandatory licenses.

Voluntary licensing schemes seem to work well for the professions that have them.

"Screw you I'm just not getting a license my work stands on it's own without your overpriced seal of approval" provides a nice backstop to rent seeking and other bad behavior by the licensing authority.

So just hoping the unlicensed companies putting out donation boxes without further maintenance don't attract any donations because the lack the license?

Send someone around to remove the boxes? You don't have to have a license but your box is illegal without one.

It's called "littering". Enforce your existing laws against people leaving crap on public property.

Ah, so ban donation boxes altogether?

No, the litter around it is.

Who is the litterer? The owner of the box or the person who put a shirt in it?

Both.

I am a bit confused. Why do you need a license to require organizations to pick up donations? Can't you just pass a law that requires it?

How will you enforce that law without a licensee's id # on the box?

Businesses and charities already have a business license number. I am opposed to adding an additional license for something like this. If they use the existing number I wouldn't have an issue, but it sounded like there was an additional license that was required.

It sounds like the people who issue licenses need a professional license!

More seriously though: Rossmann's troubles are in the domain of business licenses, a licensing system that sounds too complex, staff that are not properly trained in the services they provide (or are incompetent for other reasons), and likely under-staffing in the departments he interacts with. My interpretation is this is more damning of the city itself than the principle of licensing.

As opposed to the other licenses such as the medallion system (Uber drivers clearly can do the job), the interstate commerce commission licenses (there are people without trucks who live off lending their licences), the insane regulations that make drug development cost billions (you need approval from gov every step of the way), the older aviation licensing ( your competitor aviation companies had to approve that there was a "public need" for your extra company to compete with them), the EMT licensing that does the exact same thing as the aviation companies got to do (you get to decide if there is a public need for the existence of your competitors, weirdly they never found the need for competition)?

I'm sure the list goes on, but the notion that a govt worker who knows nothing about the practical side of the business and that does not care about how those insanities of the law will destroy jobs (this is the guy who will fine you) combined with an apathetic worker behind a desk with no incentive or reason to be responsive to you when they f up will make anything safer is just utopian.

I just hope that people who run away from California and nyc realize that these policies just don't work. If you are in doubt about how much of the homelessness in California is the fault of the govt licenses/red tape just look up on YouTube how much bureaucracy you have to go through to build more housing. One guy had to wait 4 years and spend millions in lawyers just to get a no from the city council.

Californian citizens have spent decades fighting tooth and nail to prevent any housing from being created, and have basically turned their local governments into anti-development walls, and pursued every private tactic available as well. But that isn’t an unforeseen problem with government so much as a problem with the government representing the actual wishes of their shitty residents.

> advocate for more professional license requirements in some other comment thread.

How in the world is this now a comment on the validity of licensing services? An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out?

I know someone who was on hold with an airline for hours, should we dismantle airlines? Is notoriously impossible to get google on the phone, should we scrap search engines and online advertising?

This post is simply looking for an reason to push a personal point.

> An organization has bad customer service so you should throw the entire field out?

In this instance, "customer service" is the entire point of licensing. You pay a fee and get the license. Here, Rossman paid his fee but didn't get his license because the government is inept.

That's not just bad customer service, that's this government agency failing to do the thing it was created for.

Most government agencies fail to fulfill the stated reasons for their creation, yet the agencies endure. For example, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to forestall major economic cycles; subsequent depressions and recessions have had no negative impact on them.

Well, two different things can be true at the same time. Also, this seems less a problem with licenses and more a problem with getting and renewing them. Which are two related but different issues.

How are they different issues? The problem with getting and renewing a license directly stems from the requirement to have licenses. It is an inevitable part of it.

It simply isn’t an inevitable part of it. There’s a chain of failures happening to Lois Rossman and the licensing board not picking up phone calls to take appointments is one of them and it’s in no way “inevitable”.

By your logic if a service fails in a chain of services for a piece of software to work, we should call the failure an inevitable part of the system and throw the whole thing out. Complex things can have more points of failure. It seems like simplifying the renewal process here by removing or automating one or more steps is the sensible thing to do.

> You can't have the good without the bad

This is not a rational claim. Yes, you certainly can have the good without the bad. The existence of a process doesn't imply its brokenness.

One important thing to note is that in the over 9 years I have held a DCA license for repair, they have never

a) checked my soldering skills b) looked to see whether I got dust between the LCD cell & backlight layers when doing screen replacement c) checked to see what quality of iPhone screens we use for screen repairs d) asked or tested my ability to do my job

You pay the troll toll, and you get a paper that goes on your wall. I could be the best tech in the world, or I could be a giant idiot... you'd never know.

Some people have the mistaken impression that being licensed means I have been tested, inspected, etc.. nope. They inspect to make sure your business cards have your license number on them. They don't inspect to figure out if you actually do good work for your customers.

The license gives customers a way to track your reputation.

The internet gives customers a way to track reputation, government adds zero value to that

Yelp & Google do a far better job, and the way I feel about yelp is undisputedly bad.

If you google portatronics 46th st, you will learn about the business way faster than if you show up in person, take down the license number, look up their license number, etc.

Further, I have had angry customers leave bad reviews, file chargebacks, etc. Of all the customers I've had in the past 9 years with a DCA license, I had one go to the DCA over an issue they had with the post office that I quickly resolved with a full refund. This is one out of over 40,000 people in nine years, during COVID when the post office was being screwy with everything.

My point is, this just doesn't happen anymore. but I've had TONS of people take grievences to google/yelp, and 99% of the time we give them a call, say mea culpa, ask what we can do to fix it, and work it out and it gets turned into a 5 star again.

People who have a problem go to Yelp/Google to leave a review, or their credit card company for a chargeback. You won't find much related to the reputation of the business using the DCA because it's not the way this generation handles these issues.

We've moved on from this system. It's a system designed to be useful for a pre-internet era, and exists solely so that the city can generate revenue. It's important to call a spade a spade.

FYI, Google Maps has recently started to 'disappear' negative reviews. They show up when the reviewer is logged in but checking the business incognito will show fewer reviews.

No, licensing is not about customer reputation tracking. Licensing is about giving the government a way to shut you down if you cause problems.

When government works, this is actually a good thing.

This is like dealing with a monopoly that you can't unsubscribe to. And imagine those who don't have a large Youtube following and don't have the money for a lawyer. What are they to do?

This is not the time to play with city workers lacking in proactivity and/or competence. This is lawyer and/or representative time. Escalate the issue (ok, he's doing this with the video)

If the payment was done, that shows intent on renewing the license. Might be worth nothing, might be worth something.

Do you think if the city sits on a permit renewal by Chase or Starbucks that they'll diligently sit and wait? Yeah, right...

Agreed. Sue the city. That will get someones attention. Well, maybe not in NYC. I honestly don't know.

Seeing a lawyer doesn't necessarily mean suing the city, it means someone who can navigate rules and regulations

Or even know who to call to take a closer look.

That's fair, I just meant if the stern letter from a law office (which I am sure New York officials get weekly) didn't do anything.

Why is this being downvoted? It seems like perfectly reasonable advice and one of the first things that came to my mind as well. Is there something in the video that happens which is causing people to vote this down?

Edit: instead of silently voting me down too I encourage someone to provide thoughtful written discourse expressing your disagreement so we can all grow and learn together

Unfortunately, the hard truth, in America at least, is you have to hire a lawyer for these problems. Most such problems magically disappear that way. It's unfair, but it's how it works. It's a lot like needing to bribe an official to get something done: if you don't understand, the system seems impenetrable.

IDK, I see a lawyer as a positive benefit. Sure, some city, state, or federal employees are incompetent but at least there is a means of getting help if you're desperate enough.

lol - all systems have rules and gatekeepers. After all, all systems are operated by humans. Governments, corporations or other large organizations are not magical entities that exist in a vacuum - there are humans at the core of all of them.

I'd take "hire a lawyer" over "bribe an official" any day of the week.

Yes, but that is a very low bar.

Right — a lawsuit is the pretty much the only thing that must be answered.

How long would it take to have this resolved in court? Courts that are backlogged due to Covid? What's a business owner supposed to do while this goes through the courts?

And obviously, how much is it going to cost?

Before running to a lawyer he should at least send a paper letter. Skip this email and phone BS. Certified, Return Receipt, signature required. Even a lack of response is still documented. Right now it's just he said/she said. And if it does get to the legal level, having an official and actionable paper trail is a lot stronger than "they haven't answered one email in 9 years". A judge isn't going to care about that (right or wrong is irrelevant - email is not as actionable of communications in business vs. mailed correspondence.)

If they still don't respond to a letter like that and it bounces back from the post office then you really have something for an attorney to start with. Attorneys are expensive - do the basics first before engaging one (if you have to).

And no, engaging an attorney does not automatically = a lawsuit. Quite the opposite, actually.

That works for many things. Many years ago Microsoft acquired a phone company that we had apps in the app store for. We had documented proof of the sales receipts but no payment. After months of nothing, I printed and sent an invoice by certified mail with signature requested and we were paid shortly thereafter.

This the right answer unfortunately that is downvoted without explanation.

This is over-regulation at it's best.

That's not even a regulation problem per se, it's a bureaucracy issue. The only regulation here is that you need to get a piece of paper to do business. There's no complex requirement, no job-specific rules to follow, no training requirement, nothing except a piece of official paper.

Some jobs in some places may have onerous requirements for some jobs, possibly for good reason, such as having a doctorate to perform medicine, which takes a decade of hard work or so. The bureaucracy involved may be simple, you're supposed to have the diploma: if you're found to have performed medical acts without it you end up in jail. (This is not typically how it's done any more for a number of good reasons, incidentally.)

Getting a simple piece of paper is the problem. As far as regulations are concerned, this is not any more complex than buying a concert ticket. If the festival you wanted to attend turned out to be unable to do that in a timely manner, you wouldn't fault them for selling tickets. You'd fault them for sucking at a simple business task.

That's why I said over-regulation, what I mean is regulation for the sake of regulation. Although, I would imagine there is a form with some fields that if filled incorrectly would result in a rejection. I don't really want to debate what the meaning of regulation is, but I see it as any checkpoint with a government, not all of it is bad but a need to get a piece of paper for which there are no requirements does seem like a regulation and a pointless one at that.

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