[fragmede]

> It seems like the market could correct for a bad practitioner in the barber space pretty easily,

Why do you assume that? I bet most people don't know their barber personally, and just go to the shop to get a cut. Should getting a haircut be fraught with having to go online and read a bunch of reviews, followed by the inevitable bickering between fake reviews and fake responses on top of that? No, I just want to get a decent cut for a decent price. We can nitpick over how much training is reasonable, and sure there's an element of protectionism there, but if the Internet had taught us anything, it's that online reviews are bullshit. I would hate to have to rely on them to correct for a bad practitioner when they aren't really able to do anything about bad doctors, which has a much higher bar to practice.

[8n4vidtmkvmk]

My wife just paid $300 for a root touchup and the stylist did an awful job. Apparently money and licenses and who knows how much experience aren't guarantees of a good result either.

I've had bad haircuts too. And I have the simplest hair cut ever. Just buzz it off. But noooo.. on multiple occasions they've missed way too many strands of hair.

[EvanAnderson]

> I bet most people don't know their barber personally, and just go to the shop to get a cut.

My wife and her friends make personal recommendations about stylists frequently. My male friends either go to chain barber shops or they have a personally-known barber (and, in one case when an older barber retired he gave personal recommendations for a new barber). At least in semi-rural Western Ohio I see a lot of word-of-mouth for barbers. I'm an oldster (48), though, so I don't know how the youth handle this. (I also haven't participated personally because I haven't had a haircut in 30+ years...)