Bob Ewing has a piece up at BigGovernment.com promoting an organization called the Institute for Justice.

Within it, he tells a horrible tale about an Oregon barber named Dale Smith, who had his barbershop closed down by the local government because he failed to renew his 54-year-old barber license. Now, to renew it, he will have to pass a 75-question examination; as a result, he has questioned whether he wants to return to the trade. Those small government bureaucrats, shutting down the working man!

Ewing is outraged by this, and his photograph shows why: he is too young to understand what is really going on here. Us old timers, as it were, understand the world of barbers quite differently, and realize there is a lot more to this story than a government run amok and hurting an elderly barber because he didn’t pay their stupid fee. In fact, the story as he reports it is way off base.

The Czar believes that a barber is like an auto mechanic or a bartender: when you find a good one, you stick with him. You get to know him really well, and you make darn sure he knows all about you. The Czar is at a happy point in his life where he walks in without appointment, sits in the chair, and gets exactly the haircut he wants without having to explain why, for $12. With that, you get a straight razor shave with hot lather on the back and sides of the neck, too.

Most people pay $25 or more to make an appointment, go into a place with migraine-pounding music, and have to explain to Kầễtlỉn what a basic haircut is because she has been cutting hair for only three weeks now to pay for college, and she’ll be gone in two weeks to become a veterinary assistant. And then gives you something that looks like Ryan Seacrest would laugh at.

Because of the special relationship the Czar enjoys with his licensed barber, the Czar knows quite a bit about the crazy world of barbering. And why, in the long run, Bob Ewing and Dale Smith are not telling the whole story.

Ewing portrays the issue as a local government requiring an expensive license just to freaking cut hair. Everybody needs a license! Can’t do anything without a license!

Not quite. Barber licensing goes back over 100 years and exists in probably every community in the United States. Ready? The barber licensing program was instituted by barbers as a way to squeeze out non-union people from performing what was, especially a century ago, a fairly dangerous profession. What youngsters like Ewing do not realize is that in many small towns in the 1900s, the barber was also a dentist. Before then, they were often what passed for the medical trade as recently as the late 19th Century in the Old West. And just as you expect your doctor or nurse or dentist to be licensed by a board that understands, at the least, basic human anatomy, you went to a licensed barber and that was that.

Fact is, you no longer need a license to cut hair as armies of Cætlȳns, Kāētlīnns, and Chāētļēņņs are happy to demonstrate on your scalp. But you do need a license to be a barber, an architect, an engineer, or any other protected trades. Having the license means participating in a periodic board review, continuing education, and paying the annual fees to legally call yourself a barber and put out the striped pole.

Fact is, Dale Smith failed to pay for the license. And just as you would expect local government to shut down an architect who failed to maintain his professional license, they told Mr. Smith he could not legally run a barbershop anymore. A barber forgetting to maintain his license is like an attorney forgetting to renew with the bar: this is a generous way of saying “suddenly unemployed.” As a licensed professional, Mr. Smith was solely responsible to maintain his professional licensing. No one else is required to do this for him. He knew the rules. He broke them.

Mr. Smith could of course call himself a men’s hair stylist and reopen tomorrow if he wanted. But at his age, like sadly most barbers, he’s at retirement age anyway and Mrs. Smith (assuming there is one) probably likes seeing him home more.

Chances are that the evil local government bureaucrats were unaware that Mr. Smith let his license lapse and would not have acted even if they did somehow realize it. And chances are that the phone call came in from another barber who got wind of this. Or from the licensing board who wants their fees paid.

Mr. Ewing should treat himself to an old world (licensed) barber while they still exist.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.