[HN Gopher] My business might have 32 days before it's shut down...
___________________________________________________________________
My business might have 32 days before it's shut down by NYC [video]
Author : xbmcuser
Score : 444 points
Date : 2021-07-12 13:28 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| 71a54xd wrote:
| I've met Louis in person, he's truly a standup guy with a heart
| of gold. That said, he needs to pony up and get a lawyer. Making
| petty arguments on YouTube isn't going to help you with
| bureaucracy it's only going to make things worse. If government
| employees (state or otherwise) hate one thing, it's being called
| out point blank for how they either a) don't do their job or b)
| are effectively worthless.
|
| To be frank, I don't see why Louis hasn't left new york / the
| east coast yet. I was unfortunate enough to move to NYC just in
| time for covid. I still enjoyed my time in New York but I really
| understand a lot of what Louis has been saying about the city
| itself. Subsequently I left. He clearly hates the business
| climate, makes weekly videos about how much NYC sucks. Maybe for
| his own health it's time to move to another state?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I love this aspect of USA. Hate the gov? Move to another state.
| It's not easy and slightly prohibitive, but less prohibitive
| than moving to another country.
|
| It also encourages states to compete with each other, try new
| ideas and attract businesses; for e.g. Arizona and Southwest
| chip industry: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-southwest-is-
| americas-new-f...
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Making petty arguments on YouTube isn't going to help you
| with bureaucracy it's only going to make things worse. If
| government employees (state or otherwise) hate one thing, it's
| being called out point blank for how they either a) don't do
| their job or b) are effectively worthless.
|
| Don't talk about the problem or the useless government
| employees will retaliate. How do we get rid of them?
| Aromasin wrote:
| He mentions in his videos that it is largely because he has
| built up a team of people with a very specific expertise built
| over years working with him, that you can't just find - meaning
| training people up from scratch. He'd effectively be started
| the business from scratch in that case. He's offered them all
| very good relocation benefits but obviously if people are
| content they're not going to want to move and he doesn't want
| to forcefully coerce them to.
| sangnoir wrote:
| Why would you move from a city in which your skills are in
| high demand, and you already have a rolodex of clients with
| whom you have established a relationship? The relocation
| benefits have to be obscene to counter that glorious
| opportunity.
|
| As long as New Yorkers still exist in their dense millions,
| service providers will _always_ appear to fill a market need,
| even when they have to jump hoops (to a point). NYC knows
| this. China knows this.
| [deleted]
| devwastaken wrote:
| He is leaving, they're planning to move to Florida, or another
| suitable area.
|
| He's big enough now that yeah, he needs lawyers on retainer.
| Part of the video is to show just how insane cities are, and
| how they don't play by the rules if you don't litigate. This
| isn't how any of it is meant to work. If Louis is successful in
| his move, no doubt others will follow.
| xemdetia wrote:
| In other videos (especially for the prior license issue about
| resell of used goods vs. the repair license) he does seem to
| talk to lawyers who are familiar with the city rules but has
| reported not having great avenues to success. The problem
| seems genuinely tied to some parts of the city government
| still assessing fees/fines/so forth, but the COVID rules are
| preventing escalation/remedy in person in a meaningful way
| and the only way to get traction is to do so. The general
| vibe he's been putting out across the last couple months is
| just that he's feeling like he's getting shook down since in
| his perspective he's holding his end of the bargain with
| paying for licenses yet can't get the city to hold theirs.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Not every city is like this. Rich cities that can
| systematically screw people and get away with it are like
| this because business like this one aren't a large enough
| overall part of their revenue stream for them to care about.
|
| Poor cities can't systematically marginalize small business
| without hurting themselves enough to be held accountable so
| they don't generally do this kind of thing or when they do
| they fix the system quickly.
| EricE wrote:
| Indeed - but even "rich" cities aren't totally isolated.
| I'd encourage people to watch some of Louis's other videos
| where he roams the streets and even the national brands
| have pulled out of NYC - but the amount of vacancies
| overall is pretty astonishing. Between the "summer of LOVE"
| and COVID it's been a pretty harsh one/two punch and there
| is already a significant momentum that has started of
| resources pulling out of the city - and once these trends
| start they are pretty damn hard to reverse. NYC is only
| rich if there is commerce for them to tax.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Yep, I was in NYC for about a month prior to covid and
| throughout 2020. Small business is absolutely decimated
| and last summer was truly one hell of a cluster-fuck. I
| witnessed first hand, the police doing nothing as huge
| stores were looted. Louis is also correct about NYC
| basically being a place where it only makes sense to live
| there if you're insanely rich. $180k minimum to even have
| your own place that isn't a box.
|
| I will say, some of Louis' videos are a bit disingenuous,
| there are still some things open some of NYC still isn't
| _that_ much of a shit-hole. Granted, even with all of
| this, there have been times where I 've gone to meet
| people in Union Square park or grab dinner on the Upper
| West Side and I'm sad I can't do that anymore. It's
| weird.
|
| Which goes to show, that NYC is truly the physical
| embodiment of a love hate relationship.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| I'm in the same situation but I'm not earning 180k, I
| live just fine in my apartment and don't consider it a
| box (I am also a minimalist and don't have any hobbies
| that take up space). Small business around me that relied
| on working commuters were decimated but small business
| that relied on actual working folks living in nyc are
| just fine and the summer is actually booming.
|
| I would say nyc is always what you make of it and what
| kind of lifestyle you want to lead. It's certainly not a
| place for people who want yards for example.
| warent wrote:
| I remember him saying in another video that NYC is going to
| become basically a ghost town in a couple decades if this
| kind of behavior from the government (along with its failure
| to fix the real estate problems) keeps up. It's curious to
| wonder if that is accurate. Only time will tell I suppose
| devwastaken wrote:
| As Louis has shown a number of store fronts have simply
| closed shop, and the landlords don't care to fill the spot.
| Some have just outright sold their buildings and they just
| sit there without occupancy for years. It's a very
| unnatural market that shoos away normal people that don't
| have a few million lying around.
|
| I don't believe NYC will ever become a "ghost town" but it
| certainly will look more like a pale grey image of brick
| and mortar where you just live in a box, go to the office,
| and repeat.
| philistine wrote:
| That's obnoxiously self-centered to say that if the city
| government doesn't fix your personal issues with it, one of
| the five biggest metro area _in the world_ will become
| empty in decades. Sure, New York could lose the ability to
| maintain a vital and legal small business sector, but the
| city is not going anywhere. The worst that could happen is
| a period similar to the horrible 70s, with difficult
| finances and poor opportunities for people, until the city
| gets its head out of the sand.
| rabuse wrote:
| Detroit is a prime example of failed industry, and
| horrible leadership.
| billytetrud wrote:
| You seem to be massively misunderstanding what he meant
| by "basically a ghost town". All he meant is that lots of
| people will leave, opportunity will be reduced, etc. You
| seem to be taking it far too literally.
|
| And no, it's not obnoxious or self centered to say that
| if the NY government doesn't fix it's massive number of
| problems that bad things are going to happen. It seems
| pretty clear that's the case.
| otterley wrote:
| Using the right words is the responsibility of the person
| uttering them. Expecting others to read your mind is
| unrealistic.
|
| It's better to say what you mean than expect others to
| figure it out.
| billytetrud wrote:
| Communication is a two way street dude. As a speaker, its
| your responsibility to consider your audience when
| encoding your thoughts as incredibly inefficient,
| verbose, and imprecise human language. As a listener,
| your responsibility is to consider the speaker and what
| they mean in their context. Its also your responsibility
| to clarify things that you think its possible that you
| have misunderstood. It is of course the speaker's
| responsibilty then to double check that you've understood
| things if they get the chance.
| otterley wrote:
| I think we should expect better use of vocabulary from
| the audience at HN, who tend to be better educated than
| the general population. Expecting people to say "people
| will become discouraged and leave" instead of "NY will
| become a ghost town" -- when the former is what they
| actually mean -- is not unreasonable.
|
| Sure, I will concede that it is the listener's
| responsibility to seek clarification when responding to
| an ambiguous statement or claim. But here, there was no
| ambiguity, just hyperbole.
|
| Hyperbole is used far more often here (and on the
| Internet in general) than it ought to be. We can, and
| should, have nuanced discourse here. Let's keep the bar
| high.
| billytetrud wrote:
| I understood him perfectly well. Why didn't you? I think
| you should become more aware of your own flaws instead of
| blaming others.
| otterley wrote:
| That's unnecessarily provocative. Check your insults at
| the door.
| billytetrud wrote:
| Its not an insult. But feel free to take it the wrong
| way. I just hope that next time you violently disagree
| with someone, you stop and think "what are other ways i
| could interpret this that make more sense?"
| otterley wrote:
| You keep placing the responsibility on the wrong person.
| Worse, you're assuming that the person you're speaking to
| doesn't know their own flaws. That _is_ insulting.
|
| I don't know what else to tell you.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| This is the kind of comedy gold I come to HN to read XD.
|
| Who should we contact in the state directorate to qualify
| our grammar and arguments to ensure they aren't _too_
| jovial or clever?
|
| Where can we purchase carbon ESG credits for our
| malfeasance?
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Yep, what OP is getting at is that in time, as a side-
| effect of out-migration the cool things that draw people
| to NYC will start to slowly disappear entirely. The small
| bakeries, the things that bring charm to neighborhoods
| all over the city. Safety is by far the biggest one.
| Chelsea is legitimately a dangerous place to walk around
| and I've lived in pretty seedy areas before, especially
| in college (where my neighbor was robbed at knife-point
| and my apt was broken into by heroin addicts multiple
| times).
|
| What he means is that the people who remain will be those
| who are too poor to leave. Whom will be slowly replaced
| by wealthier and wealthier transients. Which is sad, by
| far the worst kind of gentrification.
| hguant wrote:
| >The small bakeries, the things that bring charm to
| neighborhoods all over the city.
|
| You're starting to see this in bits and pieces already.
| New rental space is primarily going to chain restaurants
| and box stores because the rent is too damn high for
| anyone not corporate to get started. _The Atlantic_ was
| talking about the issue of lots going vacant for months
| at a time because the owners are holding out for insane
| lease prices...in part because they need to pay insane
| taxes on the property.
|
| I love New York (in small doses) but it's not tenable as
| it exists right now.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Yep, what OP is getting at is that in time, as a side-
| effect of out-migration the cool things that draw people
| to NYC will start to slowly disappear entirely. The small
| bakeries, the things that bring charm to neighborhoods
| all over the city._
|
| You don't need any kind of net migration to do this,
| gentrification has already done it over the last 20
| years. People who move there now don't care about that,
| though. They care about the city being Disneyland for
| rich people.
| EricE wrote:
| New York State and California have lost enough population
| that they are likely to loose at least one representative
| in the house of representatives.
|
| This "too big to fail" argument is BS - they are failing
| and once cities start to go into death spirals they can
| accelerate in astonishing ways.
|
| And just to make things extra spicy, thanks to COVID job
| mobility has never been greater. This isn't your fathers
| economy. Any of these cities taking anyone for granted do
| so at their own peril. San Francisco's insane policy of
| supporting shoplifting up to $900 has caused Wallgreens
| to pull out entirely, Target closes at 6PM now - what do
| small businesses do where their only locations are in
| areas afflicted with these sane policies? When losses
| exceed revenue they go out of business. As if COVID
| wasn't bad enough :p
| woah wrote:
| The Walgreens shoplifting seems to be more of a problem
| for Republicans hundreds of miles away than it is for
| actual Walgreens locations in SF.
| busterarm wrote:
| You mean the Walgreens locations that remain.
|
| Walgreens closed 17 stores in SF in the last 5 years. The
| on-the-record reason given for the closures, in
| statements to the city council, is petty theft.
|
| CVS is closing stores in similar numbers and has stated
| that SF is "one of the epicenters of organized retail
| crime". In many instances the stores security guards were
| physically assaulted.
| pfranz wrote:
| Last time I heard this discussed the number of closures
| over the past few years were in line with their national
| average.
| busterarm wrote:
| Yeah, but the overwhelming, landslide majority of their
| store closures are in poor areas. That's not SF.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm skeptical about this reasoning that the company
| supposedly provided. I don't think we should assume that
| they're under any obligation to tell us the truth about
| why they're shutting locations.
|
| I think the real reason is "Amazon, Target, and dollar
| stores are eating our lunch."
|
| Without the attached clinics and pharmacies I don't think
| Walgreens/CVS have a strong business to begin with.
|
| This publicly-facing explanation puts all the blame on
| others, not their own store management. Not their
| understaffed, dumpy stores with high prices and bad
| products.
|
| Can you think of a single product category that Walgreens
| or CVS does better than its equally convenient
| competitors?
| gamblor956 wrote:
| California is a huge state. And led the US economy during
| COVID. And had the largest and fastest post-lockdown
| recovery. Oh, and during that time actually strengthened
| its position as the _world 's 5th largest economy._
|
| Yes, SF is having serious, self-inflicted issues. But
| SF/tech is actually a tiny portion of the CA GDP (since
| most tech revenue a la Apple doesn't actually get booked
| to CA). CA either leads the nation or is in the top 5
| (states) for the following industries: movies, video
| games, manufacturing, agriculture, tourism, aerospace,
| biotech, government contracting, and energy.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| New York's population loss isn't coming from downstate,
| it's people leaving dying economies in the southern tier
| and north country and not coming back.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Both New York State and California grew in population
| between the 2010 and 2020 census (by 4.25% and 6.13%,
| respectively [1]).
|
| They will each lose a seat in the house because they grew
| less than the U.S. as a whole (7.35%) and due to
| rounding.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_census
| consumer451 wrote:
| > ... they are failing ...
|
| Do you have the data for this? I just saw a story showing
| that CA flight is largely a talking point more than an
| actual phenomenon. Would love to see the numbers here.
| BrandonM wrote:
| https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/2020-Migration-
| Trends-U...
|
| _> 2020 Migration Trends: U-Haul Ranks 50 States by
| Migration Growth
|
| ...
|
| Growth states are calculated by the net gain of one-way
| U-Haul trucks entering a state versus leaving that state
| in a calendar year. Migration trends data is compiled
| from more than 2 million one-way U-Haul truck customer
| transactions that occur annually.
|
| ...
|
| California ranks last by a wide margin, supplanting
| Illinois as the state with the greatest net loss of
| U-Haul trucks. California has ranked 48th or lower since
| 2016..._
| not2b wrote:
| Please correct me if I am wrong, but this appears to be a
| common mistake; they aren't reporting a per capita
| number, but a total number. When this happens, California
| will rank near-first (most of a good thing) or near-last
| (most of a bad thing) because it has the largest
| population.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Yeah, I'm working remote for the current startup I work for
| (which used to have offices in NYC). Basically my deal was,
| I'm leaving until there's an office because my lease is up
| and I'm not signing a new one if there's no office.
| Because, why live in NYC in a box if there's no office
| (which I did for all of 2020). I've been interviewing and
| somewhat considering moving back to NYC for a nice pay
| bump, but even though I hate WFH I'm now considering
| cutting the process short and just looking for remote gigs.
|
| I'll miss my friends I made there, but prices are already
| going up and since I usually like to have side-gigs it's
| clear that NYC is going to make that difficult as well. I
| hate this because I did really like how easy it was to be
| social in NYC, even post covid. But idk, seems like an
| idiotic move given how shitty the trajectory still looks
| for the city.
| paulgb wrote:
| > I usually like to have side-gigs it's clear that NYC is
| going to make that difficult as well
|
| I'm curious what you mean by this? Are you talking about
| gig-work side-gigs and the city is clamping down on that?
|
| I have my personal biases but I actually think the
| trajectory for the city is pretty positive. All the
| people who didn't actually want to live here can work
| remote jobs elsewhere, making room for people who want to
| have a world-class arts/food/entertainment/etc. scene at
| their doorstep. I know people who have left since the
| pandemic and people who have moved here, both groups seem
| happier for the change.
| Craighead wrote:
| Good, run away.
| xdrosenheim wrote:
| I remember seeing a video by Louis, where he talked about
| speaking to a lawyer. He was told to pay a fine, instead of
| going through the legal trouble. It would be both easier and
| cost him less, because it would probably happen again, and
| then he would have to lawyer up again.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| > makes weekly videos about how much NYC sucks.
|
| This coule be part of his appeal to his followers. If he left
| NY, then he'd just be an outsider complaining on the internet
| about something he's no longer affects him. Plus, you can
| dislike the bizenv, but love other aspects of the area.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > Maybe for his own health it's time to move to another state?
|
| He's doing just fine. His youtube rankings are pretty "up
| there" for that genre of channel. There is no way to know how
| that compares to the repair shop, but I suspect it's at least a
| comparable income stream.
|
| He makes 1st person videos of himself riding around Manhattan
| on his bike, free-associating and showing abandoned store-
| fronts BECAUSE it gets clicks-- otherwise it would be a waste
| of time. There's libertarian edge to it all. It looks like the
| commenters are heavily populated with red-state doom-scrollers
| rubber-necking at the "downfall" of NYC.
|
| If Rossman would move out of NYC to somewhere else, he wouldn't
| have as much grist for the youtube channel, would he? He would
| have to go back to making strictly repair videos, loose his
| whole staff, and probably have less volume in his repair
| business as well.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Yes, but he's also made numerous videos about how he makes
| less than a pittance of income from YouTube. Yes, the doom-
| scrolling applies here, but he's from New York originally and
| you can tell the amicus is how a place he grew up in is still
| going down-hill.
|
| I was in NYC for all of covid and can confirm that Fox News
| is full of it when it comes to "rampant crime in NYC" however
| it's not a perfectly rosy picture either in terms of the
| recovery of small business and character of the city.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Louis Rossman is one of the few people on YouTube who has
| over a million subscribers, but less than 1% of them actually
| watch his content. His YouTube rankings are "up there"
| because of off-platform factors - i.e. him heading up the
| Right to Repair movement and getting lots of subscribers for
| that. If he actually tried to monetize his YouTube channel
| he'd make very little money, because his videos are nowhere
| near as popular as you'd think. (Yes, he has talked about
| this.)
|
| You are correct that Louis has a right-libertarian mindset,
| but I'm going to disagree with you on the "he just shows
| abandoned storefronts so that right-wingers can circlejerk
| about the downfall of left-wing urban centers" thing. He's a
| business owner in NYC, so he sees a _lot_ of bureaucratic
| incompetence and is willing to complain about it. Like I
| said, YouTube isn 't his actual career; this comes straight
| from his lived experience in the same way that his Right-to-
| Repair lobbying does. He's equally willing to shout and
| scream about landlords jacking up rents, too, despite it
| being ostensibly "free market"; because it directly harms him
| and his business.
|
| And yes, Rossman is specifically planning to move out of NYC.
| Like I said before, he _genuinely_ does not give a shit about
| his YouTube channel or selling outrage bait to conservatives.
| Hell, for a while he literally had a banner baked into every
| video asking people to watch on Vimeo instead of YouTube.
| slibhb wrote:
| > Making petty arguments on YouTube isn't going to help you
| with bureaucracy it's only going to make things worse.
|
| Looks like you were wrong, from the linked video (an hour ago):
|
| > Thank you to everyone here who made a fuss, as I doubt I
| would've had someone on this case this quickly otherwise. The
| emails & calls I received this morning from the city made me
| feel like a customer at the Hilton... which I don't gotta tell
| you is NOT the way I usually feel when contacting NYC
| government bureaucracies.
|
| Apparently dealing with the NYC government is like dealing with
| Google. When they screw up, your best bet is to complain loudly
| in public and hope your complaints go viral.
| 71a54xd wrote:
| :cryingemoji: someone on the internet said I was wrong :(
| hudo wrote:
| Apple has to be behind all this, since he is so loud about their
| repair policy and fixing iphones instead of sending people to buy
| a new one :) !
| tristor wrote:
| I'm guessing you're being satirical, but on the off-chance
| you're being serious: No, there is no conspiracy here. NYC city
| bureaucracy is insane at every level. This is standard fare.
| Louis already knows what he needs to do, but his personality
| bristles at being forced to do things that aren't required by
| the letter and shouldn't be required. He needs to hire a law
| firm to expedite his permits like every other business in NYC.
| elmo2you wrote:
| I don't know anything about this particular situation, so
| please consider the following purely speculative in regards
| to this case.
|
| I have lived for a long time in a country where insane
| bureaucracy and corruption are the norm. Probably up there
| with some of the worst on this planet. I've also seen quite a
| bit of what happens behind the scenes, from relationships
| with what someone might call the more privileged section of
| society. One thing I can say with a high degree of certainty
| from those experiences (no, I won't talk details): there
| usually are strong connections between the interests of
| powerful corporations/entities and insane bureaucracy and
| corruption, whenever the latter two exist. Even if they might
| not be directly the source or reasons for the existence of
| the latter, powerful corporations certainly know how to use
| their influence to maintain a dysfunctional status quo and
| use it to their advantage wherever they see an opportunity
| for it.
|
| While NYC bureaucracy no doubt exists for other reasons, it
| does not rule out there be something else going on here as
| well. Not a chance in hell anyone but a whistle-blower could
| ever prove that though. But that's exactly why it's so
| tempting for powerful entities to nurture and support
| corrupt/dysfunctional systems (as for them they work just
| fine, if not better).
|
| I can not speak for NYC (or anywhere inside the USA for that
| matter), but I have seen powerful entities work officials so
| that the function of governments would not improve.
|
| Of course, every American is free to believe no such things
| ever would take place in the USA .. however, that would
| certainly make the country exceptional (for a change),
| compared to how things works pretty much everywhere else on
| the planet.
| addicted wrote:
| Also, Rossmann needs to look into this:
|
| https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/dca/downloads/pdf/businesses/Doe...
|
| It's likely that he doesn't even need to renew his license.
| burnte wrote:
| In the early part of the video he mentions that this extension
| has eben terminated, hence the letter.
| robfig wrote:
| I have a similar (but much less severe) situation -- need to
| change my car registration, but my NY State online account has
| been locked "for security". Calling the phone number says "please
| use the online portal", but has an option to continue to wait for
| an agent. However, there is no queue, just a message that says
| there are high volumes of calls and try your call again. I called
| at various times over a couple weeks until giving up and just
| driving with an incorrect registration. Not ideal, tbh.
|
| And don't get me started on the local USPS.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Can't you just make a DMV appointment?
| rafale wrote:
| This is what I call soft tyranny.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I don't think people as many people realize this as they should,
| but when your local government is so incompetent they can't get
| back to you in a reasonable time, you're basically fucked.
|
| _You almost cannot ever meaningfully sue them._
|
| Almost all national governance has sovereign immunity, and only
| occasionally relinquishes a portion of it to physical damages.
| boredwithlife wrote:
| You can always vote with actions: either ignore the gov and
| practice business without their permission or start murdering a
| few of the less productive government employees to motivate the
| others to actually work.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I'm not going to endorse it as a good or desirable system, on the
| contrary, but rather than shutting down his business this person
| should probably hire an expediter.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| What is an expediter?
|
| I just assumed that small-businesses aren't shut down en-masse
| because the flip-side to impossible red-tape is lax-
| enforcement.
|
| I suppose that corporate retail establishments have lawyers
| retained to do this stuff. Are they doing something different?
| LordAtlas wrote:
| A nice way to say getting someone to do the greasing palms
| work for you.
| foolinaround wrote:
| similar to assassins, i guess they do the dirty work of
| greasing on your behalf, so your hands stay clean, your job
| gets done, and all's well in the kingdom.
|
| Folks from 3rd world nations understand this very well.
| EricE wrote:
| >What is an expediter?
|
| A necessary evil and often a lot cheaper than the whole
| lawyer route. Can be something as benign as someone who will
| go stand in line and do time consuming bureaucratic queuing
| on your behalf all the way to folks who have relationships
| within the bureaucracy and can get things flowing.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| An expediter could be a law firm but doesn't have to be.
| Often they employ former city employees.
|
| Expediters are experts at navigating the city bureaucracy and
| getting whatever license or permit is required. They are most
| commonly used by developers and bars but can be useful for
| all sorts of businesses.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| What does "navigation" mean here? How does one navigate a
| system if they say call or email us, and when you call or
| email them, they ignore you?
|
| Is "navigate" just a euphemism for having a personal
| connection on the inside that you can get favors done by?
| rtkwe wrote:
| It doesn't have to be personal favors, a lot of issues
| are knowing who to bug, how to effectively bug them to
| get what you want done, and the right answers to any
| regulatory questions. A lot of time at work half the
| fight of getting something done for me is finding the
| right person to talk to to get the request information we
| need to file.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| As rtkwe says, it can mean a range of things. Some are
| relatively innocuous like knowing what form to fill out,
| others are borderline like having worked with the
| relevant people before and having built up some good
| will, and there have been cases of outright corruption.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| If we're talking about developpers, "navigation" would be
| straight bribing I guess.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Someone you'd call a fixer if they weren't in the US
| dcolkitt wrote:
| What's frustrating about this is how indifferent people are to
| these institutional failures. They'll just shrug their shoulders
| and say "sounds like a problem for the fat cats that run
| companies".
|
| The vast bulk of civilization runs on business. Unless you're
| content with North Korean living standards you need to make it
| possible for people to start, run and grow businesses. A society
| that fails on this point is just as fucked as one that can't keep
| clean drinking water flowing or achieve basic literacy.
| ruste wrote:
| At what point has New York violated his civil liberties through
| sheer red tape? Is this something the ACLU would pick up?
| sigstoat wrote:
| closer to being the sort of thing that the institute for
| justice would take.
| gruez wrote:
| IANAL, but my impression the 14th amendment seems to be one of
| the things that gets misinvoked all the time (along with RICO),
| so I'm going to guess "no".
| curryst wrote:
| I don't see anything in the 14th that would apply here. NYC
| has the right to regulate business, so they aren't depriving
| him of a right. A business license isn't "property", and they
| aren't seizing any assets. And I would guess that they aren't
| discriminating against him in particular; they're probably
| equally inept with everyone.
| curryst wrote:
| Likely never, at least in this manner. NYC has the right to
| regulate business as they see fit. I'm not aware of any laws
| that would require the city to issue the license or even to
| respond, unless they're discriminating against him in some way.
| I don't get the impression that's the case here.
|
| A statement from the ACLU condemning NYs lack of action might
| get him the publicity to kick the city into action, though.
| billytetrud wrote:
| > I'm not aware of any laws that would require the city to
| issue the license or even to respond
|
| He purchased a license and sent him a response as a receipt.
| They have an obligation to send him his license or respond or
| both. That is quite clear. The NYC government doesn't have
| the right to discretionarily refuse to fulfill the services
| their residents directly pay them for.
| singlow wrote:
| But the ACLU doesn't generally get involved in trying to
| battle bureaucratic incompetence. If the bureaucracy was
| being used to mask racism or other prejudicial policies the
| ACLU might be interested, but in this case it just looks
| like real incompetence.
| himinlomax wrote:
| That's a weird thing to invoke.
| vkou wrote:
| If the ACLU were regularly taking cases like this, I'd stop
| giving the ACLU money.
|
| This seems like a problem for the private sector to solve. He
| should contact his local Chamber of Commerce - it's supposed to
| look out for business interests, after all, and for any given
| municipality, seems to have most of the town's politicians in
| its pocketbook.
| mttpgn wrote:
| The ACLU selectively deploys their limited resources only on
| cases which they believe can have a lasting national impact on
| constitutional interpretation.
| the_optimist wrote:
| ... and on promoting neoliberal 'resistance' cause celebre,
| which varies with finances, leadership, and who happens to be
| holding political office. Surely positioning this licensing
| issue as such could almost instantly command the full weight
| and authority of that org.
| xibalba wrote:
| Issues like these are why many people conclude it's best to
| reduce the size and power of government. The incompetence and
| apathy in this small, city level bureaucracy is akin to lighting
| taxpayer money on fire. Now scale that to huge society-wide
| government initiatives and departments and you have an awe
| inspiring level of waste.
| syshum wrote:
| It still baffles me that people see stories like this, and
| desire to have government take over more and more of their
| life.
|
| In this instance it is business license, now image you need a
| hip surgery and you have to schedule that with the
| government....
| vkou wrote:
| > It still baffles me that people see stories like this, and
| desire to have government take over more and more of their
| life.
|
| What's baffling to me is that people making your argument
| seem to forget how poorly people are treated by the private
| sector.
|
| > In this instance it is business license, now image you need
| a hip surgery and you have to schedule that with the
| government....
|
| I haven't had to schedule a hip surgery with a government,
| but a government has also never sent me or my wife a
| surprise, erroneous $4,000 bill for what was a fully covered
| medical procedure (that in any other country would cost half
| as much) that then took two months and a lot of high-blood-
| pressure games of telephone to reverse.
|
| My parents and grandparents _have_ had to schedule surgeries
| with a government, though. They get a date, they show up,
| they get the surgery, they get discharged, no bullshit, no
| surprise bills, no worrying over whether or not you actually
| owe money, or are just getting shaken down...
|
| I suppose I could only go in for treatment with care
| providers that don't fuck around with medical billing.
| Unfortunately, I am not aware that there is a single
| healthcare provider in my area who would pass that low, low
| bar.
| abyssin wrote:
| Reducing the size of the government wouldn't solve much,
| though, and it would rather make it even more disappointing.
| This kind of malfunction almost looks like some people in power
| are ok with leaving the impression the government is impossible
| to fix, and its size should be reduced.
| syshum wrote:
| It is almost like monopolies are universally bad, and when
| those monopolies also have a monopoly on the initiation of
| violence, and can send armed men to our home or business to
| make you comply with their orders reasonable or not, results
| in bad outcomes every time
| nemo44x wrote:
| Except for it's NYC which means I can assure you the people
| in power love government and would love more of it and think
| they're actually doing a good job.
|
| I think what you get in places with limitless opportunity
| like NYC is the people attracted to government are either not
| able to cut it in a city like NYC (hence why government
| employees there are generally incompetent and indifferent) or
| see the immense wealth as something they can latch on to and
| exploit to satisfy their hunger for power over other people.
| EricE wrote:
| If you listen to the phone call he had with that organization -
| the level of apathy and incompetence is breathtaking. That
| whole conversation reeks of an organization that has never had
| to be accountable to anyone for anything. You'd think people
| would at least have some basic professional pride but here we
| are.
| nvilcins wrote:
| And the best part is - the citizens (who are impacted by this
| directly or indirectly) are paying for this.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| This all really sounds like a lawyer needs to be involved
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Can we get non clickbait title?
| gandalfian wrote:
| YouTube comments suggest people have now got in touch with him
| and basically fixed it. So well done him for kicking up a fuss if
| no way to run a system...
| MisterTea wrote:
| It would be nice to post a text summary so those of us who don't
| want to waste time sifting through a 17 minute video can get a
| summary and decide to keep reading/watching or move on.
| ihatethissite wrote:
| There is a summary in the description of the video.
| EricE wrote:
| It's in the pinned comment at the top.
| callamdelaney wrote:
| There isn't
| tyleo wrote:
| I don't think this is true. At least on iOS I only see links
| to more videos in the description.
| darrenf wrote:
| Currently (2021-07-12, 14:46 BST) the description is nothing
| but 3 other YouTube links.
| limeblack wrote:
| It's in the comments.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tw04 wrote:
| He's complaining about the NYC licensing bureau sending him a
| letter about renewing his business license when he already did
| it last June. I didn't watch the whole thing either because I
| didn't find it particularly interesting. I'm assuming the
| license is supposed to be good for more than one year given his
| rant, which means he probably just got the mailer by accident
| and is making a clickbait video.
| gregorymichael wrote:
| No, having worked with others going through the same issue --
| the NYC beauracracy for local businesses is truly broken and
| terrifying for small time operators.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Actual serious question. Are bribes a part of the picture
| of getting things done?
|
| Met people who talk about greasing the wheel to get things
| done. But won't say more.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Actual serious question. Are bribes a part of the
| picture of getting things done?
|
| Yes, and they are called "Expeditors" and "Expeditor
| Fees" and in some cases "Campaign Contributions". In real
| estate for example, "Expeditors" magically make all sorts
| of things happen, not happen, go away, by virtue of
| "Expeditors Fees"
| gregorymichael wrote:
| My guess is most bribes take the form of campaign
| contributions, and are out of reach for a coffee shop
| doing $150k/year in revenue.
| klodolph wrote:
| I haven't heard any rumors to that effect. I've talked to
| small business owners who have gotten fined for various
| infractions in NYC, just casually, and my impression is
| that it's just bureaucracy in action--lots of rules,
| randomly enforced by people who individually interpret
| them one way or another.
|
| For example, a store selling used equipment was fined for
| not individually labeling the equipment as used. _All_
| equipment in the store is used, it 's all outdated stuff,
| and it's completely obvious. But one day someone from the
| city shows up and levies a fine. So now this scuffed,
| obsolete gear from the 1990s has a "used" sticker on it.
| crmd wrote:
| Yes, but you don't pay off the inspectors directly. You
| pay the money to one of a dozen or so "expeditor"
| firms[0] that are typically staffed by ex-municipal
| employees who make money in retirement by filing permits
| on behalf of people. They claim it's not grift to help
| people make sure the forms are completely properly and
| don't get put at the bottom of the pile by current
| municipal employees.
|
| [0]https://www.gcexpediting.com
| [deleted]
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| Yes. At least in the construction and waste management
| industries bribes are very much a thing, though you will
| never hear that word actually spoken.
|
| Waste management especially is mafia territory, if you
| don't know the right people and make sure they get
| something out of your operation, you can count on getting
| shut down for breaking the same rules that every single
| one of your competitors also breaks.
| MisterTea wrote:
| In the past, yes, bribes were a thing. I went to Edison
| HS in Jamaica and our shop teacher told us stories of
| bribing clerks to get permits faster. E.g. in-ground pool
| permits took years to get through so he said a crispy
| $100 would get your paperwork moved to the middle of the
| pile.
|
| I used to work with a truck driver who knew how to
| properly grease the guys running the loading docks at the
| Javits center (slip a $20 into your paper work.) Though
| he said it only works with "older guys who've been around
| and know the game." That saved us 2-3 hours of waiting,
| we go into a dock right away, truckers watching us were
| pissed we skipped the line somehow. This was about 15
| years ago though.
|
| Though nowadays I hear those practices have mostly gone
| away. Of course we have no real way of knowing.
| handrous wrote:
| In The Wire, Season 2, automation & computerization
| threatening both dock jobs themselves (through greatly
| increased efficiency) and opportunities for relatively
| small fish to make a little _extra_ on the side (though
| much better tracking), is a pretty big part of the plot.
| busterarm wrote:
| Grease doesn't work at Javits anymore and the wait times
| are now 8hours plus.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Figures. This was around 2005/6.
|
| When we went in the office he said it might not work as
| the younger guys "don't play the game" but then saw an
| older guy at one desk and said "That guy right there."
| Dude pages through the paperwork, sees the $20 tucked and
| clipped, says "okay looks to be in order. You're going to
| loading dock so and so." I think we waited in the truck
| for 5-10 min before we were called and the driver ahead
| of us didn't look too happy.
|
| That mentality is from the old mob days. Thankfully
| mostly a memory.
| freedomben wrote:
| All the recent evidences that any large organization will screw
| you over through technology and neglect, and the only way to get
| justice is to beg for it on social media and hope your post goes
| viral, does not fill me with optimism for our future.
| mattzito wrote:
| Terrible that this guy has to go through this - there's a lot of
| terrible city agencies, and I've heard general horror stories
| about the DCA for years.
|
| That being said, at this point throwing your hands up and saying
| "I don't know what to do, help me youtube" is the wrong way to
| handle this. I was going to make the suggestion about a lawyer,
| then I saw another poster had done so. The other route to go here
| is to reach out to your city council member. In NYC, there are
| enough city council members that they will respond to your
| request and someone will get back to you. They can make things
| happen, especially as it pertains to ridiculous bureaucracy.
|
| In NYC, we also have a public advocate, whose job is literally to
| help smooth over disconnects between the public and nyc
| government agencies. They have a form right on their website
| where you can request help. Either of these approaches (or both!)
| would be more productive than complaining on youtube.
| notananthem wrote:
| Having worked in public sector, its laughable you blame "the
| government," how big it is, how corrupt etc things are. The
| problem is your government is just your neighbors making 25% or
| less of your tech salary, who have very complex rules and
| processes they have to follow, and it takes a lot of effort to
| make those more efficient. No, because things are inefficient, it
| is absolutely not an invitation for every sh _thead to offer
| their two cents on how to fix it. That 's literally what public
| employees spend most of their day doing, trying to get private
| employees they interact with to f_ck off and stop "explaining"
| how they'd fix things.
|
| What do you do in situations like this? Well, seeing as public
| employees aren't paid to watch youtube videos, you surely won't
| get any response via youtube viral videos. You will get people
| hating on underpaid public employees more, yes. You could
| escalate and send certified mail, have an attorney make contact,
| etc.
|
| You'd be surprised to know, there isn't someone sitting on the
| other end trying to make things worse for you. Its just your
| underpaid neighbor. If you're a psychotic libertarian who is just
| screaming at this reply, yes, please, move somewhere with less
| regulation to make some sort of point, we'd all love you to move.
| nicky0 wrote:
| The real question is why is a government license needed to
| operate a business at all?
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| If the government can't find people to implement/understand or
| automate the complex set of rules then it shouldn't make the
| rules.
|
| His channel is popular enough and NY is big enough there is a
| decent chance that someone watching will know someone who works
| in some government role in NY.
| johnnyfived wrote:
| I can't speak much for living in other states, but the state
| government of New York is incredibly slow and unresponsive at
| best, and at worst purposefully designed to be be a labyrinth
| with as many blockers as possible to reach someone. I can't
| imagine being part of an older generation and not as tech-savvy
| trying to receive help over the phone or online, whether it's
| from contacting unemployment, business licenses, the council,
| etc. They make it next to impossible (just look online about
| trying to get a human on the phone, if you just kept calling and
| didn't know to seek outside help from people who already have
| figured it out, you could literally never end up contacting
| someone).
|
| The fact that they tax so aggressively and I've paid so much over
| the last several years living here really pisses me off. If you
| do need NY's state government help they are not there for you,
| and they don't care about you. But they'll gladly keep taking
| your money.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I grew up here and I agree. I lived elsewhere for a while and
| it was amazing having something approaching freedom for once,
| no crazy gun laws and taxes and even the DMV was better - no
| crazy long forms with redundant/unnecessary information, just
| put some stuff in a website then walk in with your documents.
| No unnecessary inspection and other stickers cluttering up the
| windshield either. Last state didn't even make me mail the
| plates back like NY would so I got to keep them as a memento.
| NY is additionally the only or almost only place left to not
| allow those little gas pump flaps that keep them on when you
| walk away.
|
| I unfortunately had to move back for a family issue but I can't
| wait to get out again. I think next time I might get some nice
| land in Wyoming, about as opposite NY as you can get.
| gumby wrote:
| There's no transcript attached to the video for some reason (and
| the poster frame looks like an ad). What's the issue?
|
| People are quoting Rossman's YT comment but it is predicated on
| you knowing what his actual complaint is.
| TravisHusky wrote:
| This sounds like something out of a Franz Kafka story.
| gregorymichael wrote:
| Last year I helped the owner of my local coffee shop renew his
| NYC license. I've been doing web development over 20 years and
| barely managed to navigate their website. It took over an hour
| and dozens of attempts to pay a couple hundred dollars to renew
| one of the many licenses he needs to stay open. We moved to New
| York five years ago and I've come to believe the propaganda that
| it is the Greatest City in the World. This experience more than
| any other -- the hoops that every smalltime entrepreneur has to
| hop through -- seriously called that claim into question.
| tootie wrote:
| I have an easy time believing the process is complicated and
| probably very out of date and cumbersome, but I have a hard
| time believing the guy in this video about it being so
| impossible. The proof being that there's thousands of operating
| small businesses in NYC.
| rabuse wrote:
| How do you know they're not encountering the same issue?
| Louis is the only one with a large enough audience to be
| vocal about it.
| jf22 wrote:
| To be honest that doesn't seem to bad. About an hour to renew a
| yearly license?
| ecshafer wrote:
| The idea of a yearly license to operate a coffee shop, that
| requires renewal and payment, is pretty absurd in my opinion.
| iamtheworstdev wrote:
| To renew something that is honestly no more than probably the
| following: (1) Update address/contact info if changed (2)
| Estimate earnings (3) Pay fee
|
| Yea, I'd say an hour is too much.
| [deleted]
| jf22 wrote:
| This is longer than it should be but it's not overbearing.
| handrous wrote:
| Clearly worse than it should be, but my experiences with
| health insurers and hospital billing departments made the
| anecdote read a lot funnier than it was intended to, for
| sure. "Only an hour!?"
| gregorymichael wrote:
| The happy path was 5 minutes.
| jf22 wrote:
| I agree it could be more simple an hour doesn't seem too
| awful.
| busterarm wrote:
| Worse still - New York is dead last among 50 states for
| economic recovery from covid. With NYC supposedly being the
| global center of business and finance. Vacant storefronts are
| everywhere and I don't see it getting better anytime soon.
| Reminds me too much of the 1980s.
|
| I'm done. Packing it up and getting out in 2 months.
| afavour wrote:
| I say this as a liberal believer in government: NYC (and NY
| state) make one of the worst cases for effective governance out
| of anywhere I've lived. (it's all relative, of course: the
| places I've lived have been cities and towns in relatively
| prosperous western nations)
| fallingknife wrote:
| Guess you haven't lived in California.
| bushbaba wrote:
| To be fair the California online systems are better than
| any other state I worked in.
| wbl wrote:
| California goveement workers I've had to interact with are
| smart and helpful and go the extra mile to let you know
| what you need to do. The problem is the rules they don't
| make.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| New York (the state and the city), Chicago, and California
| are the reasons why I will never live in a state or city with
| only one strong political party at this point. All of them
| are kleptocracies (and effectively dictatorships).
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I really don't think you could say that about Wyoming and
| many others.
| kube-system wrote:
| Regulatory capture definitely exists in some red states.
| VHRanger wrote:
| You forgot Texas and Florida in there
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I've never lived in Texas or Florida.
| sanedigital wrote:
| I tell anyone who will listen: stay as far away from NYC and NYS
| as you can when you're operating a business. The bureaucracy is
| insanely complex and both governments harbor a very strong anti-
| business sentiment.
|
| NYS charged my previous, 2-person, zero employee agency a $14K
| fee for not having a Workers Comp policy, even though having one
| isn't necessary for member-managed businesses. We sent in
| paperwork demonstrating our case and they didn't care. They kept
| asking for more proof that we didn't have employees--even though
| they had no evidence that we _did_ have them. A bit hard to prove
| a negative!
|
| After several years of back and forth, we finally just said
| forget it, closed that entity, and started ignoring the monthly
| shakedown notices. Now I'm wary of even having clients in NYS.
|
| [Edit: I've heard CA is similar, but don't have personal
| experience there.]
| gamblor956 wrote:
| _[Edit: I 've heard CA is similar, but don't have personal
| experience there.] _
|
| Have personal experience with CA. It's not at all the same. NYC
| is a nightmare to work with, but CA agencies are quite easy to
| work with. The only other jurisdiction as bad as NYC is the
| state of Hawaii.
|
| Other than during the tax filing season I can reach a live
| human at a CA agency (except the DMV) within a few minutes just
| by calling. Representatives are very helpful over the phone,
| and I've resolved many issues for clients and my employer (now
| that I'm in-house) just by calling.
|
| CA's bureaucracy _looks_ complex, but it 's actually very easy
| to navigate, and if you need help, there are a great many
| government employees who would be happy to help.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > even though having one isn't necessary for member-managed
| businesses
|
| Don't you have to waive it in advance though?
| sanedigital wrote:
| You didn't at the time. The reason we got flagged was because
| we started talking to insurers about adding a policy at one
| point in anticipation of hiring.
| vincentsaulys wrote:
| Somewhat off-topic: do you know of any good resources to read
| about these sorts of requirements for NYC or the US more
| broadly?
|
| Most sites gloss over these sorts of legal requirements.
| seibelj wrote:
| Boston is not much better. I have been trying to get hold of
| someone to move a bureaucratic process forwards, that only this
| department can do, for 8 weeks now. Letters, emails,
| voicemails, nothing can get someone to reply or call me back.
| Absurd.
| ilamont wrote:
| City or state government?
|
| My least favorite Mass. business experience this year was the
| complete fuckup with the Dept of Unemployment Assistance
| solvency fund. My DUA tax rate went from 2.5% to 7.5%.
| Frigging legislature and state government had no clue that
| this was coming, and left small businesses like mine swinging
| in the wind.
|
| https://www.masslive.com/politics/2021/04/some-
| massachusetts...
|
| But frankly this is nothing compared to doing business with
| the U.S. government through bids. Never, ever, ever
| attempting that again.
| vincentsaulys wrote:
| is that 2.5/7.5% rate on the employee's salary or your
| revenue?
| seibelj wrote:
| Mine is city, section 8 housing. Trying to do a paperwork
| thing for my tenant and we did everything required on the
| deadlines but no one has ever contacted us and the new
| website they created is stuck on "Step 3" of 6 of the
| process. Not really sure what will happen when the deadline
| passes, hopefully they will be ok. Just nutty.
| borski wrote:
| CA makes mistakes, but not generally very long-term. They're
| also quite responsive - I've never had a situation in which
| they didn't respond, except for the FTB which can take a few
| weeks or months depending on time of season (similar to the
| IRS). Every other agency is, well, still a government agency...
| but tends to be responsive at least.
| erdos4d wrote:
| I've heard a lot of similar stories about NYC (less for NYS)
| and I am always wondering what the end game is for these guys.
| Do you feel like someone was trying to get you to bribe them or
| something? Absent that, I have a hard time understanding why
| they would be so persistent in going after you in such a
| chickenshit fashion.
| toss1 wrote:
| I heard some years ago from someone who used to work there that
| Cisco simply refused to bother doing business with New York
| State - simply would refuse to bid - because they found the
| entire process to be literally not worth the business.
|
| (no other verification, no info on the current status)
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| NY and CA make it clear enough to the rest of us by the fees
| for starting a business, let alone the operating risk.
| sanedigital wrote:
| Unfortunately, a lot of first-time entrepreneurs don't know
| these things and register wherever they live. And even if you
| register in another state, you still have to abide by NYS/NYC
| rules if you operate in those regions.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Similarly, there's often little to no benefit to
| incorporate in Delaware for small businesses, but too many
| assume it's a good idea. In fact, for most small
| businesses, you're worse off.
| fridif wrote:
| And if your business requires a physical presence in NY
| or CA, such as for a simple plumbing business, it might
| even be required to form in NY.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| To wit, CA charges $800 PER YEAR to have an LLC. For many
| small one person LLCs, that $800 a year makes a big
| difference. $8,000 over a decade.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| The argument I hear from folks in CA is that people who own
| LLCs are already rich and they can afford $800. This is
| exactly the attitude that makes people move out of CA. It
| is ridiculous taxation and government fees for pushing
| papers. It would be far better to let people start
| companies for free and then pay whatever fees after
| generating $1M revenue. You know, after they're "Rich".
| SMH.
| hguant wrote:
| It's frustrating seeing the rhetorical tricks people pull
| - "these regulations exist only hurt/harm the rich!" -
| when common observation shows that no, they just prevent
| people from becoming rich. The poor have nothing, the
| rich have more layers than God, so the middle class gets
| the shakedown.
| hogFeast wrote:
| It also entrenches inequality. Design a system that
| assumes everyone is rich, poor people can never rise.
|
| As someone not from the US, this aspect of the US has
| always amazed me. There is huge regulation on business at
| the state-level, particularly SMEs, but the US has a
| functioning economy somehow...do the rich just
| incorporate in Delaware? It is amazing to think that the
| US has succeeded in spite of significant efforts to fail.
| Introducing flat fees on business creation is tying a
| noose round your own neck economically.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| You cannot look at this myopically - there are many areas
| of CA's policies, especially in the 1970's through 90's
| where the "Silicon Valley" name originates from. There is
| a lot of inertia from policies - like stopping a massive
| locomotive - and just because the policies are less
| steamy, it still takes a lot to stop the train. Labor
| pool has a magnetic catch-22 effect.
|
| I've incorporated 2 LLCs in the past (not in CA) and it
| was literally a 10 minute job. Costs $50 _one time fee_.
| No recurring fees at all. Mostly online, albeit have to
| print out a form and mail it to the Dept of Revenue, but
| don 't need to queue up anywhere. Opening a bank account
| is straight forward and takes 1 day.
|
| There is also a lot of variation from state to state -
| ironically, the red states have better policies for
| inequality for businesses. Low regulation in this area
| helps the "small guy/gal" get their feet wet without much
| hurdles. I strongly believe in regulation based on
| thresholds of how large/monopolistic/oligarchic companies
| get. Regulations should be designed in a way that
| promotes methodical canopy growth but not completely
| cover the seedlings that are hatching on the ground.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| That's not ironic, it's common knowledge.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| The $800 fee is a minimum tax for the year, not an
| arbitrary fee, it is credited against other taxes you
| owe. To that end, most businesses with employees or
| substantial sales won't owe anything extra. It is waived
| the first year in most cases, so it isn't a short term
| problem for new businesses. There are other business
| structures for a company besides an LLC if costs like the
| registered agent, the tax complexity, the minimum
| franchise tax are an obstacle.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Straight from the horse's mouth:
| https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/types/limited-
| liability...
|
| So even if you have no income or a loss, you still have
| to pay $800 tax. That seems ridiculous.
|
| Given how it works in states like Nevada and Arizona ($50
| flat one time fee, no minimum LLC tax or fees),
| California goes on a limb to intentionally make sure your
| little LLC suffers as much as possible:
| http://www.incorporatecalifornia.com/callctax.html
| ecshafer wrote:
| Why was this downvoted by people. Seriousquestion raises a
| good point. $800 a year is a massive cost. Lets say the llc
| is a cleaning service, and they are only pulling in $20k a
| year anyways. Operating as an LLC is 1/20th of their income
| to do it legally. This is a valid point, and is on topic.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| It isn't an $800 charge, it is a minimum of $800 in state
| tax. For an actual business with $20k in revenue the cost
| is much lower than $800, maybe zero
| seriousquestion wrote:
| You would think so, but it is an $800 charge even if you
| make $0.
|
| _This yearly tax will be due, even if you are not
| conducting business_ , until you cancel your LLC.
|
| https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/types/limited-
| liability...
| rewgs wrote:
| Incorrect. I own a single member LLC in CA and very
| simply must pay an $800 charge to operate. This is a
| charge completely separate from taxes owed.
|
| I know because for a couple years I didn't owe any state
| business taxes and thought I didn't have to pay the $800.
| I was wrong and had to back pay those charges plus
| interest. It sucked.
| [deleted]
| borski wrote:
| FWIW, as of 2021, the first year's franchise tax fee is now
| free: https://www.llcuniversity.com/california-llc/annual-
| llc-tax-...
|
| (But I agree with you, and would file an LLC in DE or
| elsewhere, unless I plan on raising funding in which case
| it wouldn't be an LLC but a DE C-Corp)
| [deleted]
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Wyoming. Low fees, no taxes; it trumps DE in every way
| except investability (and perhaps the ecosystem, but it's
| getting there fast)
| dlsa wrote:
| The frustrating part of this type of saga is that nothing will
| improve from this. It's very likely its not even due to lack of
| resources.
|
| I'd be fascinated to see a journalist's investigation into why
| this took Louis needing to go to the internet for something
| essentially quite trivial. And yes, granting licenses should be
| regular, boring, routine paperwork.
| emmelaich wrote:
| The author's pinned 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.
|
| Thank you._
| toofy wrote:
| is there a reason why it's nothing but a link to a random youtube
| video rather than an article or something which can be skimmed?
|
| sorry poster, but i'm not going to watch minutes of a random
| youtube video from a random account to decide if this is
| interesting or just more youtube outragePorn for the outrage
| addicts.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| this
|
| v;dw
| nikanj wrote:
| If you feel like the video needs a summary blog post, please
| write a summary blog post. Be a positive force, don't focus on
| tearing things down.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Louis Rossmann is a popular youtube creator who is a bit of a
| rambler, but the upside is that you can read something else
| while you listen to him. In the last year or so, he has done a
| lot of ragebait on commercial real estate and the abusive
| government of New York, but his original content was on right
| to repair, repairing mac devices, and running a small business.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Because the business-owner also has a popular Youtube channel.
| He does not have a popular blog.
| danuker wrote:
| Indeed. Talking into a camera is faster than typing.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I agree with you on talking being faster than typing.
| Having said that, I feel that this is more of a reason for
| me (and, I assume, for the top commenter) to counterargue
| that it's the youtuber's job to distill the message down to
| its important parts. Speaking is definitely faster for
| _him_ , but it requires a bigger compromise on my part -
| whatever amount of time he saved requires me to spend ~15
| minutes for something that can be told in one.
|
| Or to put it bluntly: if he can't take the time to
| streamline his message then I don't have the time to listen
| to all of it just in case it gets interesting at some
| point.
| halfeatenpie wrote:
| His youtube channel started out as him just rambling to
| the camera about his problems and how absurd it is. It's
| grown since then as people have been following it. His
| channel is basically that, him talking to the camera
| about problems he sees in the world. He does what he
| wants with the channel. I'm sure he's not going to change
| that format anytime soon just because he has more
| followers.
|
| If you want to watch it sure. If not then that's fine.
| But he doesn't have to streamline anything and that might
| be his loss, but in the end it's his channel to do what
| he wishes.
| eplanit wrote:
| The solution: leave New York. The idea of having to get
| permission to operate a business (unless it causes pollution,
| etc.) is anti-American. Don't accept such rules, and move to
| where that kind of nonsense doesn't happen. Vote with your
| feet/wallet.
| chias wrote:
| And the 14 people that he employs?
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| I watch Louis' channel often, but I don't recall him
| mentioning what his employees think (only that they exist).
| For all we know, they might be as fed up with NYC as Louis
| is.
| chias wrote:
| Being fed up with NYC is one thing.
|
| Telling your wife and kids that you know they have friends
| and relationships and a school they are used to that
| they're moving a thousand miles within the next three
| weeks, and you're sure your kid's best friend or your
| teenager's boyfriend or your wife's book club will be
| fantastic penpals is quite another. And that isn't even
| touching on family ties.
|
| I have a friend who moved to Portland recently. Ended up
| moving back three months later because his very young child
| couldn't handle not being able to spend time with his
| grandparents. People develop roots, and do not transplant
| easily on a timeframe measured in weeks.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is probably naive, but my initial thought is that if he
| already renewed his license a year ago, he should be all-clear to
| ignore the warning message, right? If someone says he's in
| violation, he can point to his renewal receipt.
| sneak wrote:
| My guess would be that they fine him for operating on an
| expired license, then he has to spend thousands in legal fees
| fighting it, while his business is closed in the interim. Legal
| fees don't care about whether you're right or not.
|
| Ignoring the government when they are being inaccurate always
| ends with you losing money, not them.
| Tostino wrote:
| Unless you are a large enough corporation, then all bets are
| off.
| mttpgn wrote:
| At 3:13 in the video, he says "The absolute tl;dr of this video
| is if you are buying devices from customers, you need to submit
| the information regarding that machine and the customer to a
| LEED's (sp?) online database[...] We don't buy these devices."
| (He sells used devices customers have forfeited or given to him
| for free).
| imroot wrote:
| I think it's LEADS:
|
| Law Enforcement Agencies Data System
|
| In Ohio, it's operated by the Ohio State Highway Patrol. I know
| that Chicago has their own LEADS implementation. Wouldn't
| surprise me if NYC has their own.
|
| As a pawn shop owner, I have to submit the same records.
| yonran wrote:
| Regarding the violation for electronic records of used goods
| for sale, he read the summons in this video
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=965BLLWv8h8. The citations were
| for Administrative Code SS20-273
| https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYC...
| (electronics record required for each purchase AND sale of
| second-hand articles) and Rules Title 28 SS21-07
| https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/newyorkcity/latest/NYC...
| (electronics record must be at a specified website
| https://www.leadsonline.com/). If he didn't purchase second-
| hand devices but did sell second-hand devices, then it seems
| that he would be required to enter each sale transaction on
| leadsonline. I'm not sure whether he tried to record each sale
| transaction there as required by the law.
| danuker wrote:
| That's a different video referring to possibly having to fill
| an online form for refurbishing donated/abandoned devices.
|
| The current video is about the incompetence/malevolence of NYC
| DCA.
| nodesocket wrote:
| Welcome to the world of New York bureaucracy and regulation.
| These sorts of stories are common and it's why businesses are
| always complaining about New York and California.
|
| I used to have a California LLC. As a side note, if you were
| unable (forced) to operate your business due to Covid
| restrictions, California made no exceptions for the $800 LLC
| fees. It's outrageous.
| akudha wrote:
| I am not the one who posted the comment above.
|
| Whoever downvoted the comment (at the time of me writing this)
| above - can you add a comment why? This seems like a reasonable
| comment.
|
| I see more and more reasonable comments simply being downvoted,
| with no reasons or counter-point provided, which is not
| helpful.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I did not downvote the comment, but I do find it a little
| silly, so here I go:
|
| 1. Assuming your business is going to employ anyone at all,
| $800 is only 1-2 weeks of pay even at minimum wage.
|
| 2. I am not aware of any type of business California has
| forced to shut down completely (i.e. literally no way of
| making money) for the entire year.
|
| 3. If this business is just a side project you're trying out
| on top of your main job and it fails, you can disband it
| within 1 year of creation and are exempt from the fee
| (Source: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/types/limited-
| liability... - See section "Short form cancellation").
|
| We could argue about whether it discourages starting small
| business in California, or if the CA government should have
| waived the fee this year to help with COVID-19; but acting
| like this is some insane requirement that is killing small
| businesses is ridiculous. Business that cannot afford this
| fee are already failing and almost certainly can't even
| afford to pay their employees. (For the record, I find it to
| be a pretty regressive tax, and should just be reduced to
| whatever overhead exists for managing LLC filings.)
| ryandrake wrote:
| For #1, let's not assume the business is employing anyone.
| Maybe it's one or two partners making no revenue, trying to
| develop some software on the side. I did this for a few
| years in CA, and the $800 was my biggest yearly expense.
| Flushed it down the CA toilet, just to exist.
| djrogers wrote:
| I have a property I rent out for $800/mo for 11 months/yr,
| and wanted to out it in an LLC for liability reasons. At
| $800/yr, the LLC would be my second largest expense by a
| large amount, so the confiscatory fee effectively made it
| impossible to do this.
|
| My only option is to use an out of state LLC, for which
| California gets less than nothing - not only do they not
| get my fee, but they get less reporting and regulatory
| control as well.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Every dollar and every minute drive marginal behavior. By
| definition, you will never know what efforts have been
| killed dead by casual bureaucracy.
|
| It's like Round Up, except for business!
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| The only way is to vote with your feet, and leave former
| political preferences behind in the states that where destroyed
| by them. I've heard Texas is a popular choice nowadays.
| mbfg wrote:
| He has 14 employees some of which can't move. His point is he
| doesn't want to screw them.
|
| The problem apparently is that the NYC has a department
| called the DCA, where you can't do anything without directly
| interacting with _people_ in the DCA, and the DCA refuses to
| interact with people.
| random314 wrote:
| California has been destroyed?
| johnebgd wrote:
| Insane.
|
| I just setup a company where it will take a few years to build
| something in Ohio. It's $99 once and no annual fees. Zero
| dollars a year.
|
| https://bsportal.ohiosos.gov/
|
| From my non legal perspective, if you aren't yet generating
| revenues it pays to incorporate outside of California.
| tracedddd wrote:
| Only issue is if you live in California and pay yourself
| you're still subject to most of the California specific
| business laws as a company doing business in California, so
| it's difficult to escape by incorporating elsewhere.
| johnebgd wrote:
| If you aren't generating revenues and want to incorporate
| to hold the IP then why throw good money away on a state
| that requires annual fees? As I understand it, you can
| always transfer the IP to another entity before it has any
| market value. This can let you and others start building
| with a relatively low cost.
| amluto wrote:
| I would argue that the actual outrage is the $800 fee in the
| first place. It's a regressive tax that hurts small businesses
| and is absolutely meaningless for large businesses. CA should
| reduce it to some nominal value that covers their costs, e.g.
| $50/year. Major bonus points if CA included registered agent
| services so that small businesses could save a couple hundred
| more dollars per year.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| I've been following Rossmann's videos on NYC commercial real
| estate. It is just shocking to see how many vacant commercial
| properties there are on every block. His street-level videos are,
| imho, more telling than any professional market analysis.
| addicted wrote:
| https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dca/businesses/live-chat.page
| dt3ft wrote:
| 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._
| Railsify wrote:
| This is over-regulation at it's best.
| himinlomax wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| larossmann wrote:
| 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.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| The license gives customers a way to track your reputation.
| larossmann wrote:
| 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.
| syshum wrote:
| The internet gives customers a way to track reputation,
| government adds zero value to that
| vkou wrote:
| 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.
| philistine wrote:
| 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.
| coryrc wrote:
| It's called "littering". Enforce your existing laws against
| people leaving crap on public property.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Ah, so ban donation boxes altogether?
| Gracana wrote:
| No, the litter around it is.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| Who is the litterer? The owner of the box or the person
| who put a shirt in it?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| 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?
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| How will you enforce that law without a licensee's id #
| on the box?
| II2II wrote:
| 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.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| So just hoping the unlicensed companies putting out
| donation boxes without further maintenance don't attract
| any donations because the lack the license?
| hef19898 wrote:
| 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.
| Aerroon wrote:
| 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.
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| 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.
| II2II wrote:
| 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.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| 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.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| 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.
| blueboo wrote:
| > 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.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > 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.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > 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.
| nickff wrote:
| 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.
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| > 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.
| dheera wrote:
| 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.
| onefuncman wrote:
| 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.
| derefr wrote:
| 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."
| late2part wrote:
| 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.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| akiselev wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| 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...
| behringer wrote:
| please hold while we connect you to the IRS customer
| advocacy department...
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| And people wonder why there is staunch support for less
| government involvement. At least when I get screwed over by
| a private company I can talk to someone...so long as it's
| not Google.
| dalbasal wrote:
| or paypal, or...
| emn13 wrote:
| ... or pretty much every large organization ever if
| you're somehow falling between the cracks, and your
| approval isn't critical to their survival. Paying em
| money isn't enough, unless it's enough money to move the
| needle.
|
| People blaming government for this nastiness apparently
| have never dealt with any big businesses?
|
| I mean, the government is _exceptionally_ large and
| powerful, so that 's even worse simply by scale; but on
| the other hand, they don't tend to cut corners quite as
| extremely as businesses do. In any case it's hardly a
| night and day difference. If anything, the kinds of
| checks present on the government should be present on all
| organizations beyond a certain size. Not that that's ever
| going to happen...
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Yeah but unless it's utilities, or internet, I don't have
| to buy the product. My "vote" with my dollars can be
| immediate and have a direct affect on them. Saying I'm
| not gonna vote for someone isn't the same effect.
| akiselev wrote:
| You don't have to buy their products the same way the
| government doesn't have to provide for your health care.
| While _technically_ true, in practice it can easily mean
| the difference between a comfortable life and
| destitution.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I find getting the government on a call is possible but
| takes awhile at times. Good luck getting an email
| response from digitalocean. Good luck getting Amazon on
| the phone. Good luck getting Dang in the phone if you
| have an issue here Good luck getting anyone in any tech
| company to answer the phone.
| kbelder wrote:
| Amazon has pretty good customer service. They are nothing
| like Google.
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Good luck getting Dang in the phone if you have an
| issue here
|
| I cannot speak for others, but I will go on the record
| that Dan has replied to every email I've ever sent over a
| decade and has helped me to become a more thoughtful and
| open minded contributor on HN through both his private
| emails and public comments. YMMV. Thanks Dan.
| ipaddr wrote:
| I will attest that he provides great email support. The
| original post was about call support for private
| companies vs governmental entities.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Point taken.
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| > Good luck getting Amazon on the phone.
|
| I've called Amazon quite a few times when I've had
| problems and have always had a pretty good experience
| when doing so.
| fnord77 wrote:
| you can always talk to your congressperson/senator's
| office. many are very helpful in cutting through the BS
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > And people wonder why there is staunch support for less
| government involvement. At least when I get screwed over
| by a private company I can talk to someone...so long as
| it's not Google.
|
| I don't bother wondering why people are ignorant anymore,
| some things just are. You get a vote simply by existing
| as a citizen and can put effort into changing government.
| Businesses can tell you to pound sand unless you're a
| shareholder or management. Government can be held
| accountable (caveats such as Venezuela and Somalia
| aside), businesses less so.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Boiling this down to biz vs gov is a false dichotomy.
|
| There's some fundamental "usability" spectrum aligned
| with "optional-ness" vs "mandatory-ness". Equifax,
| Experian, Trans Union, etc have some of the worst
| customer service of all time. They make egregious errors
| and are not held accountable. My experiences with the DMV
| (another semi-mandatory service) pale in comparison with
| those 3 companies.
|
| Of all the bad experiences I've had, it almost always
| comes down to "Do I have other options and how easy is it
| to opt-out?". The harder it is to opt-out, the worse my
| experience has been.
| wbl wrote:
| The customer for the credit bureaus is not you.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It's the same for most semi-to-fully-mandatory
| interactions. I don't get anything from the DMV. I pay to
| give information.
|
| But you're not arguing for/against my main point: That
| it's not a biz-vs-gov problem, it's a mandatory-vs-
| optional problem.
| autokad wrote:
| > "Government can be held accountable"
|
| LOL. I remember when the city of Philadelphia flooded my
| house because they were doing some work on a neighboring
| structure. COP's response "We have a law that says the
| City of Philadelphia cannot be held accountable or sued
| for their actions". As Mel Brooks once put it, "its good
| to be the King".
| vkou wrote:
| There are similar laws in some locales that offer similar
| levels of protection to malfeasance by private firms.
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| The fundamental difference between the relationship
| between individuals and businesses and individuals and
| government is that one is voluntary, the other is not.
| Businesses need customers to survive, it is a very
| powerful motivator to providing good products and
| customer service if people are free to do business with
| someone else instead. Rapid changes in consumer habits,
| usually due to new options becoming available, have
| doomed many incumbents. Government agencies don't need
| you, you need them through force of the law.
|
| Even if you are an employee, it's a voluntary
| relationship. If you feel you're not being treated
| fairly, you can try to complain, your leverage being that
| you are free to leave. The exception to this is monopoly
| situations which is why maintaining competitive
| environments is so important. We still haven't quite
| figured out the best way to do this. Regulations, in the
| broad sense, can help or hurt competition.
|
| It's a romantic idea that we can change government
| through democracy but these agencies are quite removed
| from the democratic process. We elect representatives but
| they can't do anything unilaterally. Their priorities
| will not align with each individual's priorities at any
| given time. Even if it does align with your specific
| needs they need to build some kind of consensus with
| other representatives about what to change. It's a slow
| and imperfect process.
| solaxun wrote:
| You get a vote as a shareholder too.
|
| I tend to agree that governments on the overall are held
| far less accountable for their actions than private
| companies, which will go bankrupt without patronage
| (without... ahem, government intervention). Government
| largesse extends beyond the policies of whatever
| administration is currently in office and therefore
| beyond your vote. We're talking about decades of built up
| cruft with no impetus for change. If you have a terrible
| time at the DMV, what do you do? Sell their shares? Stop
| shopping there? No, you just deal with it. Yes, it's one
| example, and I picked one that would intentionally elicit
| a response from almost anybody regardless of their
| political leanings, but that same example applies to many
| govt. organizations. They are inefficient and there is no
| correction mechanism.
| [deleted]
| rafale wrote:
| You are talking about monopolies or quasi monopolies.
| Business in competitive environment are incentivized to
| not screw their customers. AMD vs nVidia, Walmart vs
| Costco, Coca-cola vs Pepsi,... Even monopolies don't like
| to do that as to not attract negative attention, they
| just fix their price high and come up with a narrative to
| do so.
|
| Whenever I have an issue with a private company, it
| usually getd resolved a lot faster. One time I called my
| ISP mad that I wasn't notified of their new cheaper and
| better plans, and they upgraded me, paid the difference
| and gave me a free month. The whole ordeal from start to
| finish lasted 20 minutes (including wait time on the
| phone). And ISPs are known assholes.
|
| The problem with governments is that they are a monopoly
| by default and they can't really go bankrupt (and when
| they do, they find a way to survive).
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's the difference between a monopoly by law rather than
| by economics.
|
| If the local power utility is a private monopolist, there
| is still a limit to how abusive they can be before people
| will e.g. install solar panels, or buy a generator.
|
| There is no limit to how abusive the local licensing
| bureaucracy can be because no matter what they do to you,
| no one can set up a competing licensing system that you
| can use instead. There is no equivalent to generating
| your own power.
|
| And voting doesn't work when the affected people are a
| minority of the voters. The government could imprison
| everyone in the state of Nebraska and no one in Nebraska
| could do anything about it if the people in California
| don't care enough to vote in somebody else. They are in
| fact already incarcerating more than that many people
| without anybody stopping them.
|
| It also doesn't work when the voters are misinformed. For
| example, the people of New York (and several other blue
| states) consistently pay more in federal taxes than they
| receive in federal programs, yet their representatives
| continue to support high federal tax rates. Even if you
| support those programs, those constituents would be
| significantly better off if they were state rather than
| federal programs, and don't seem to notice this.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Of course everyone notices this. The willingness to pay
| taxes to benefit people beside yourself is the basic
| divide between left and right, so it's not a coincidence
| that a more lefty state like NY elects representatives
| who support it.
| [deleted]
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| And one of the ways we prevent monopolies, to protect the
| consumer, is by introducing government regulation of
| businesses. Look, we circled all the way back to the
| topic!
| sremani wrote:
| The bureaucracy always outlives any government or
| political movement. Yes, there are political appointments
| here and there but the rank and file is permanent.
| albertop wrote:
| The bureaucratic wing of the new class has other special
| rights and privileges as well. For starters, its members
| are virtually unfireable. "Death--rather than poor
| performance, misconduct or layoffs--is the primary threat
| to job security at the Environmental Protection Agency,
| the Small Business Administration, the Department of
| Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Management
| and Budget and a dozen other federal operations," a study
| by USA Today found. In 2010, the 168,000 federal workers
| in Washington, D.C.--who are quite well compensated--had
| a job security rate of 99.74 percent.
|
| Excerpt From Suicide of the West.
| lliamander wrote:
| > You get a vote simply by existing as a citizen and can
| put effort into changing government.
|
| The whole structure of the modern civil service is to be
| as insulated from the democratic process as possible. To
| make them accountable to the democratic process would
| mean to politicize them.
|
| With (most) private businesses you have an alternative.
| They may be able to tell you to pound sand, but if you
| can simply go to their competitor then they probably
| won't.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| or... this is the result of cut-cut-cut politics. When we
| continue to cut funding, while asking our govt workers to
| do more, of course the quality of service is going to
| suffer. This isn't a problem in other countries.
| lliamander wrote:
| Having seen the sausage made in a few different
| government bureaucracies, I'm fairly confident this is
| not the case. It all comes down to whether there is any
| incentive to improve customer experience.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I'm sure a lot of Germans on here would like to tell you
| about the hell that is the German bureaucracy. While it
| works, it can just be a nightmare of forms and millions
| of rules.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Footnote: Feliks Koneczny has an interesting analysis of
| why Germany is like this. He classifies Germany as
| belonging predominantly to what he calles Byzantine
| civilization (I'll leave it up to the interested to find
| out how he classifies civilizations), tracing it to the
| influence of Empress Theophanu. At the time he published
| his works, he took Bismarck's Germany as the quintessence
| of Byzantine Germany.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It seems one of the disadvantages of not paying for
| something...
| pbosko wrote:
| So, you're not paying taxes?
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| I don't pay taxes the way I pay for a cell phone carrier.
| The taxes have to get paid no matter what -- I can't
| withhold payment or switch to a different carrier because
| I'm getting bad service. I could, as a privileged
| American, uproot my whole life and move elsewhere, but
| I'd still owe taxes for the time I had awful service, and
| depending on the circumstances might still end up owing
| at least some taxes until I renounced citizenship.
|
| Like them or not, want them or not: taxes are not
| voluntary payments, and we can't apply the same logic to
| them.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Police don't take orders from taxpayers, either. Maybe
| the victims of bureaucracy aren't its true customers.
| SilasX wrote:
| 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.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| 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.
| alasdair_ wrote:
| 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.
| behringer wrote:
| 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.
| u678u wrote:
| That's why I'll never use a virtual bank, I need one with
| branches just for that time something breaks.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| 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.
| EsotericAlgo wrote:
| 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.)
| newsclues wrote:
| 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.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| 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.
| srtjstjsj wrote:
| My local DMV is amazing at ignoring, insulting, and
| attacking people who just "show up" and ask for help with a
| process.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > 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.
| narrator wrote:
| 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.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > 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.
| lostphilosopher wrote:
| 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...
| soperj wrote:
| Disappears if that person is working remotely.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| You can visit their manager.
| thefunnyman wrote:
| 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.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| 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.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 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...
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This the right answer unfortunately that is downvoted without
| explanation.
| EricE wrote:
| 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.
| rietta wrote:
| 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.
| warent wrote:
| 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
| himinlomax wrote:
| 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?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| 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.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I'd take "hire a lawyer" over "bribe an official" any day
| of the week.
| adamc wrote:
| Yes, but that is a very low bar.
| EricE wrote:
| 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.
| xeromal wrote:
| 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.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Right -- a lawsuit is the pretty much the only thing that
| _must_ be answered.
| apercu wrote:
| Agreed. Sue the city. That will get someones attention. Well,
| maybe not in NYC. I honestly don't know.
| omegabravo wrote:
| Seeing a lawyer doesn't necessarily mean suing the city, it
| means someone who can navigate rules and regulations
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Or even know who to call to take a closer look.
| apercu wrote:
| 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.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Also call your local councilman. They have staff who will at
| least attempt to deal with the issue. It helps.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| user3939382 wrote:
| 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.
| drewg123 wrote:
| 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.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > 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.
| h_anna_h wrote:
| > That shit isn't a conspiracy
|
| What is it then?
| r00fus wrote:
| Corruption.
| corpdrone2021 wrote:
| Conspiracy seem to be a type of corruption to me in many
| cases.
| yebyen wrote:
| 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!
| h_anna_h wrote:
| Are these mutually exclusive?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Debt collectors may not be able to put you in jail, but
| 'thugs with guns' can be a pretty apt description
| otherwise.
| emn13 wrote:
| 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.
| unholythree wrote:
| 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.
| erdos4d wrote:
| This exactly.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| 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?
| scrose wrote:
| As someone whose gotten pretty involved in advocacy work in the
| city, this is the sad chain of events that I can imagine might
| work(Probably not within 30days though):
|
| 1. Contact the local community board where the business is and
| try and speak during public hours during a meeting. Let them know
| the situation, point out how badly it's impacting business and
| see if they can reach out to their contacts to get a direct
| contact. Attendance and representation at these meetings skews
| heavily towards older wealthier people, so they likely have much
| more experience working within the system.
|
| 2. NYPD reps usually show up at CB meetings. After you speak,
| talk to one of the NYPD reps and get their info in front of
| everyone. If you go directly to the precinct there's practically
| a 0% chance anything productive will happen(especially because
| you can't legally record anything in a precinct anymore), but the
| reps they send to CB meetings have to look like they're doing
| something and will likely give you a card with their personal
| email and phone number. If you send an email to them about the
| situation, you'll have another form of documentation to put up,
| even if they do nothing to help directly.
|
| 3. Contact your local councilmember's office via phone. YMMV, but
| I was very surprised how receptive mine was to complaints I had
| and how quickly they were able to get some situations resolved
| after a few emails.
| r00fus wrote:
| Seems like #3 is the only real timely approach.
|
| I have reached out to my representative (either local or
| federal) and have gotten meaningful responses and in several
| cases, they took action that successfully helped to resolve the
| issue (in one case, someone held in border detention, in the
| other case a local french preschool that was in threat of going
| out of business due to some fire code misunderstanding).
|
| It's not a sure thing but it's has a good likelihood of
| results.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| why would NYPD have anything to do with it?
| scrose wrote:
| They are typically the main group of people who enforce laws
| in NYC, and operating a business without a license sounds
| like something they'd come in quick to shutdown. They were
| also the ones who originally came to his place to handle a
| separate 'incident' that he was fined for that he discussed
| for several minutes in his video. So instead of waiting for
| them to come by and find an excuse to shut him down or fine
| him again, it's better to have written communication with the
| precinct captain to fall back on that explains his case.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-12 23:01 UTC)