All Those Permits

Yet another business, can't get started because of problems with required permits. What really gets me about such cases is the reaction so many people have to such things, like, "Oh, just one of those permit things...". It's like everyone has resigned themselves that there are three things in life you can count on: Death, Taxes and Permits. Seems to me not enough people question whether the permits should even be required in the first place.

I know. Some folks (and there are a lot of them) will insist we need permits from the government to assure our "safety", especially when talking about restaurants. Ok, then how about just not making permits a requirement? If I want to open a restaurant, it's my choice whether to have a permit or not. If you only want to go to restaurants that are approved by the government with a food establishment permit, you have that choice as well. All that would be required is, if I don't have a permit, I post notice somewhere easily seen in my resaurant that my restaurant hasn't been approved by the food police. If you come into my restaurant and don't see my permit on the wall, you are free to leave just as others are free to stay. Sounds simple enough to me.

I think the same thing should be done with building permits. If I hire someone to put a roof on my house, then I should decide whether I pay for a building inspector to come and approve the work. Heck, why should I be required to pay 5% of the cost of the job for a building permit that's approved by an inspector that may not know as much about roofing as the contractor who did the work? I suppose a future buyer might want to be assured his new home was built and maintained to the proper specifications. In that case, assuming you never had the construction inspected, you could always pay some inspector to come and check the house out and approve or disapprove it. Or, if you had obtained permits through the years, you could present them to the potential buyer. Don't know if that's much of an issue now with or without the permits, although roof and termite inspections are routine in real estate transactions.

The worst thing about all these permits is the publics indifference to them. As if government is not just a means to an end but the end in itself- and people seem to accept that. I rarely hear anyone propose getting rid of these permits, although lip service is made to "streamlining the system". Why bother streamlining the system when you really don't need the system in the first place?