State Authorisations (Regulation) in Romania

I'm from Romania and today I was arguing with some friends about the need for an authorisation by the state, in the particular case of a Bed&Breakfast business.

Basically it went the same way as it goes with the minimum-wage law:

- I said I should be able to lend rooms to people in my basement without having to get permission from the state, as long as it's consensual. The problem is, the paperwork and bureaucracy is incredibly time-consumming and costly.   

- they say state authorization (legalization) protects the consumer

- I say it keeps the consumer from getting what they want and forcing them to accept deals that they didn't ask for

- they say it protects the community, because without a proper authorisation, the accomodations might not be appropriate, might make the clients sick and that costs state money. Then they come up with an analogy of cars, mandatory seatbelts and hospitalisation.

- i say that argument is ridiculous, because if that were the case, then the rich (who pay more taxes) should have the right to ignore some laws, since they already contribute more to the state.

-  they generalise this to say that "the state must protect the citizens from their own stupidity".

- i say "if you think most people are stupid and can't think for themselves, then why do you think those making the rules are any better and are able to think for everyone else?"

- they say "we live in a society and we must have rules. we live in a democracy so some people are elected to make decisions for everyone"

Basically, this last statement wasn't even an argument, just a reiteration of their original point.

 

Another example where the state abuses authorisation is the construction business. If you build something without authorization, the state can bulldoze it. They can come on your own property and tear it down. That's just sick.

 

One area where I don't know how to (or why) argue against authorisation is the food industry. I keep hearing news about health inspectors visiting a restaurant or such and they found rats and cockroaches in the kitchen, so they pulled their functioning authorisation and fined them until they fixed the problem.

 

With EU standards, the situation just gets worse and worse. Sure, it sounds nice to have all available services upgraded to a certain minimum standard, but at what cost?

My hairdresser had to get an expensive machine that prints out a ticket with the price and such. Of course, she never uses it and no one comes to check if the "EU standards" have been met, but that's the only way she kept her authorisation after Romania joined the EU.

 

Your thoughts on this?

xSFx:

One area where I don't know how to (or why) argue against authorisation is the food industry. I keep hearing news about health inspectors visiting a restaurant or such and they found rats and cockroaches in the kitchen, so they pulled their functioning authorisation and fined them until they fixed the problem.

Since the state has mandated to itself the job of gastronomy control, it is unlikely that someone else on the free market will try to challenge it. At least not as a main profession - but you can guess what would be possible on a free market if you consider how many restaurant criticism there is in newspapers, magazines and the like.

Free market gastronomy control might look like that: You have several well-known, respected controlling companies, all of which use an individual characteristic logo (a blue dragon, for example). If the restaurant owner allows such a company to walk around his business and the inspector finds it to be of high quality, the caterer will receive a small logo sticker which can be applied to some well-visible place on the outer walls. That way, patrons will quickly recognize the estimated quality of the restaurant and judge accordingly.

And that's just one idea I hastily came up with.

 

With EU standards, the situation just gets worse and worse. Sure, it sounds nice to have all available services upgraded to a certain minimum standard, but at what cost?

That's exactly the point. In countries which are still recovering from Communism, this regulatory madness hits even harder; only a small burgeois elite will benefit from EU quality controls, whereas low-skilled and poor people will find themselves jobless and without choice.

My hairdresser had to get an expensive machine that prints out a ticket with the price and such. Of course, she never uses it and no one comes to check if the "EU standards" have been met, but that's the only way she kept her authorisation after Romania joined the EU.

In the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, the biggest mountain is 168 meters high. The EU now demanded ropeway regulations to be enacted, because you might need ropeways for every steep hill at some point in time. Just more bureaucracy, more confusion, more tax money ... for nothing.

It's horrible how many taxes we pay in Romania, and it's not even as bad as it used to be

- We pay a fixed 19% tax on all products we buy (Value-Added Tax, that's what they call it). So basically everything is 19% more expensive.
- We have a fixed income tax of 16%, but this used to be income dependant; so "rich" folk could get as high as 40%, where "rich" was considered just 1000 euro / month.
- We pay on property that we own even though we don't use it in any activity: land ownership tax.
- We for pay mandatory car/health insurance (the mandatory car insurance doesn't really do much, so we have to pay for another, private one).
- If we own a business and have employees we have to pay in taxes as much as we have to pay the worker in wages. We must give the state the same ammount of money we give to the workers - in health benefits and several other stuff.

Here's what they do with it:
- The parliament keeps getting new cars and new laptop computers every year, the most expensive ones available.
- They recently bought all policemen a police car (a new one that usually costs 8000 euro) and they got a ration of gasoline to patrol several hundred kilometers / month.
- During the ex administration they were so stupid that they bought armani overalls for some road workers, pierre cardin pens for other government officials, gold-plated tie pins and a tank for the minister of forrests and water. Yes my friends, a freaking TANK, from Ukraine.

Oh well, my European friend, don't underestimate the creativity of bureaucrats when it comes to taxes. I can't think of anything that is not being taxed in Germany. Like you, we have a 19% VAT, progressive income taxes, property taxes, capital gains taxes, luxury taxes (e.g. on tobacco, alcohol), insane gasoline taxes (at least 50% of the price are taxes), car taxes, even DOG TAXES.

Furthermore, we are being blessed with mandatory public health insurance which gets more expensive and less useful every year, mandatory social security funds for retirement which are eaten up by inflation, mandatory public schooling (a gift from the Nazi time which is not likely to be overcome), mandatory "public service" and licensing schemes for everything more dangerous than a fork.

Oh, and of course, policemen here drive fancy BMWs instead of more economical Korean cars. Politicians talk about saving the planet from climate change while using military planes to fly to vacation (the German "environment minister", of all people, did this). But nobody has, as of yet, dared to demand a tank. That one got me laughing.

Anyway, have you heard of Czech president Václav Klaus? He seems to be quite a reasonable man compared to the rest of the Euromania.