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Its ok for a business owner to refuse to do business with...

I support business refusal to do business with:


  • Total voters
    38
Two regulating entities i deal with (and what seems daily :2razz: ) are OSHA and the EPA. At times they can be a real hassle but i do understand the premise behind them. About a year ago a kid who was working for me fell about 40 feet (from a man lift) and shattered his hip and pelvis. He tried to sue both me and the particular client (me for negligence, and the client for liability). I am really tight with an OSHA higher up, and he is well aware that i run a tight ship. Long story short, the kid did not attach his safety harness, leaned too far out the basket and fell on his hip. He tried to say that the equipment malfunctioned. But what he didn't know was that following the accident, OSHA did a little investigation and documented that no safety harness was in use, and there was no equipment failure. I never even had to go to court. Some regulatory bodies are a pain in the ass, but can be a real life saver when the unexpected happens.

As far as the EPA goes, many new companies attempt to dump their wastes (diluting agents, mixed paints, sand with a high iron oxide composition, oil, etc...) anywhere where people are not. I am not as concerned with the environment (although more recently i have become a bit more aware of what such practices can do) as i am with my compliance costs. It is about $150/ton to dispose of contaminated sand and i have to put a $5000 security deposit with the disposal company because it is less expensive to haul their container myself. The real expense is disposing more dangerous waste such as the leftovers of binary epoxy blends, xylene and MEK compounds, zinc based coatings, etc.... Disposal accounts to about 5%-7% of my total revenue. It pisses me off to no degree that i have to pay thousands of dollars a year in these costs, while other scab companies do what they can to avoid it. Without the EPA making their presence felt, such companies can easily underbid me and my more established competitors due to their lower costs to operate.

The market does not self correct in regards to this endeavor. Lower bids win, and some clients even attempt to get a lower price by "disposing" the waste themselves.

Not all regulation is bad regulation. It might be a pain in the ass at times, but without a doubt it is needed in my field.
First off my condolences. You have to work with two of the most obnoxious departments ever created. What you've described though can be explained through necessary and proper though. For instance, the chems. you work with can kill people, or severely and provably destroy an eco system......so no problem with protecting the public from those harms. OSHA regs. as well would be fine if it stayed at equipment maintenance and proper safety gear mandates. But you know as well as I do that these boards go well beyond what was ever necessary.
 
First off my condolences. You have to work with two of the most obnoxious departments ever created. Its not the departments that are obnoxious, its the people, and there have been nasty people in these agencies in the past. Things are better now, but not perfect. OHSA and the golden boy should counter sue this boy and he should face a huge fine for lying.What you've described though can be explained through necessary and proper though. For instance, the chems. you work with can kill people, or severely and provably destroy an eco system......so no problem with protecting the public from those harms. OSHA regs. as well would be fine if it stayed at equipment maintenance and proper safety gear mandates. But you know as well as I do that these boards go well beyond what was ever necessary.

Things have really changed, in my day, the environment was not nearly as well protected and respected as it is today..
But, some do go overboard....human nature...
 
Would you have liked me to instead correct the inaccuracies? Of course wealth generation is not a zero sum game (i never said it was). However, in the long run all economic profits and rents go to zero (or as close to zero as they can be). Markets do not always self correct and we then have to deal with the externalities generated from market failure. Yes there are endless instances of government failure, but the "costs" are far more spread out in some regards.

And that's a better answer. Honestly, I had misinterpreted what you had meant earlier and that was all. This would have cleared away that from the get go. I don't pretend to think that market forces will correct itself. There is some amount of active monitoring and intelligent consumerism meant on our behave as well. However, in the end I can't see using government force against the rights and liberties of the individual when that individual has not infringed upon the rights of others. Is it stupid to make a business which deals with consumers and have it bigoted in some manner? Yes it's stupid, but I'm not going to make "stupid" illegal. There are easy ways to rectify the problems without evoking the heavy hand of government.
 
Within the conditions I stated in the other thread (i.e. not the only provider of a necessary service in a given area and they tell you at the time of booking for hotels and the like that they don't serve certain groups) I'm fine with a privately-owned business not allowing any of those groups. It would probably be bad for business though.
 
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