Ventura County Blues, Update

One of my favorites writers Megan McArdle comments on my post about the regulatory excess in California.  The same post was linked by Reason as well.  The Reason post got the attention of Ron Paul, who will be interviewing me for his radio show next week.

I posted a few updates on the article today:

Wow, reading this again, I left out so much!  An employee once sued us at this location for harassment and intimidation by her manager -- when the manager was her sister!  It cost me over $20,000 in legal expenses to get the case dismissed.  I had an older couple file a state complaint for age discrimination when they were terminated -- despite the fact that our entire business model is to hire retired people and the vast majority of our employees are 70 and older.  And how could I have forgotten the process of getting a liquor license?  I suppose I left it out because while tedious (my wife and I had to fly to California to get fingerprinted, for example), it is not really worse than in other places -- liquor license processes are universally bad, a feature and not a bug for the established businesses one is trying to compete with.   We gave the license up pretty quickly, when we saw how crazy and irresponsible much of the customer base was.  Trying to make the place safer and more family friendly, we banned alcohol from the lake area, and faced a series of lawsuit threats over that.

5 Comments

  1. Mercury:

    Even (some) at NPR recognize that much or even most of state licensing amounts to little more than phony barriers to entry pushed into law by those already established in a particular industry:
    http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/06/22/155596305/episode-381-why-its-illegal-to-braid-hair-without-a-license
    Of course Fortune 500 industries love this kind of thing too and they have more such tools at their disposal. The last thing a $100B company wants is for some kid in a garage to invent a service or gizmo thet wrecks their business model. But the licensing BS that Mom & Pop type outfits face is a far worse abuse of government authority I think because it needlessly limits opportunity for so many regular people - and is un-American Goddamnit.

  2. Matthew Slyfield:

    Don't forget to update us when your former employees file suit against you for closing shop.

  3. mesaeconoguy:

    Tragicomedy at it's finest....

  4. mesaeconoguy:

    Seriously, good pub Warren.

    Nicely done.