Can You Survive the Bureaucratic Hunger Games?
Licensing logic so twisted, Kafka would take notes.
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It’s been a minute since we did something fun. Enjoy!
🗂️ Choose Your Own Licensing Adventure
Will You Make It Past the Licensing Board? by The Bureaucratic Dream-Crusher and Co.
Inspired by true events.
You awake from a 75 year nap bright-eyed, idealistic, and ready to work! You want to help people, and you’re not too picky. Maybe you decide to apply for a license to become a counselor, open a teeth whitening kiosk, install safety cameras around your town or work as a midwife like you did for 30 years in the old country. You’ve got ideas… but do you have the right paperwork?
It’s your first day! Your personal AI assistant M.A.R.P.L.O.T is here to help.
M.A.R.P.L.O.T. greets you: "Please state your intention, then select your path."
What will you do?
A. Get a Counseling License?
B. Open a kiosk?
C. Put out a shingle and start installing safety cameras?
D. Midwife like you did for 30 years in South Africa?
➤ You chose A: Apply for a Counseling License
M.A.R.P.L.O.T. prints out 178 pages of forms in triplicate.
First challenge: You need a master’s degree! You look around at all the programs. They all require at least 60 credit hours, more than any other master’s degree!
That will add up to a lot of debt for a job that won’t pay well, but at least it’s not a PhD.
Oh! You’ll have to decide whether to go to a CACREP-accredited program or not. If you do, it will make it a little easier to get a license, but you’ll have to check your privilege, “do the work” to become an ally, and never ever make a microaggression.
Second challenge: You’ll have to follow the American Counseling Association (ACA) Code of Ethics.
You notice the code includes:
Belief in multiculturalism and social justice. You remember from class that means accepting belief in systemic oppression
Agreement not to “impose your values” (unless your values match the code’s values)
You’ll also have to do continuing education. In your state, that means mandatory yearly implicit bias training with a DEI-certified whisper coach named Saucy.
With M.A.R.P.L.O.T.’s help, you managed to pull off all that work, now you’re ready to get that license, you’ve just got to get square with that ACA Code of Ethics?
What will you do?
AA. Sign and nod like a good practitioner
BB. Ask what happens if your values conflict
CC. Quote the First Amendment and reach for your copy of the Constitution
DD. Say, “I don’t see color”
➤ You chose AA: Sign and Nod Like a Good Practitioner
M.A.R.P.L.O.T. Sputters and schedules the next 20 years. You get your license, and after years of agreeing that the world is systemically racist, you find yourself president of your state’s branch of the ACA.
Another few years go by, and now you are on the state’s licensing board!
Standing before you is a local YouTuber who made videos about counseling. You decided these videos fell under the purview of the license you enforce. So you brought him before the board to fine him $50k for practicing without a license after he posted a 90-second video, where he demonstrates how the therapy process works with someone who volunteered to discuss their personal issues on film.
Your Mama is just pleased as punch!
Folks are talking about how you’d be a great fit for the accreditation board!
➤ You chose BB: Ask What Happens If Your Values Conflict
There is a huddle amongst the board. They consult M.A.R.P.L.O.T., bringing up the ACA Code of Ethics. After some hasty conversation, they quote chapter and verse that your personal values are subordinate to the Code.
You keep your mouth shut from there and are eventually granted a license, but you are viewed with suspicion ever afterwards and are not invited into leadership roles.
You have a middling career and retire early, hoping to pick back up your whittling as a way to earn an income, making bears in raunchy positions to sell to tourists.
➤ You chose CC: Quote the Constitution
The room goes silent. The air becomes thick. M.A.R.P.L.O.T. begins blinking rapidly.
Suddenly, a Bias Response Team rappels from the ceiling.
“This candidate attempted to use Enlightenment principles!” one of them shouts. You are escorted to a Re-Education Module.
When you are finally released from re-education, you go by the name of Joo Dee. As a notably model student for 20+ years, you reliably reiterate, “There is no war in Ba Sing Se.”
➤ You chose DD: Say, “I don’t see color.”
You are asked to apologize on the spot for your colorblind racism as the meeting is livestreamed.
This content is clipped and spreads faster than Jesse Owens getting out of Hitler’s Germany post the 1936 Olympics. The vast majority regard that as a sign of your inherent guilt. Not even M.A.R.P.L.O.T. can clean up the mess.
The board then suspends your application, citing “failure to align with contemporary ethical frameworks.”
After 18 months of job hunting, you are tickled to be part of the custodial staff at Starbucks.
➤ You chose B: Open a Teeth Whitening Kiosk in the Mall
Your friend M.A.R.P.L.O.T. told you it’s easy money. You buy a ring light, a chair, some peppermint gel, and call it “Pearl Vibes: Smile Enhancement Lounge.” Business booms.
Then one day, a man in a suit approaches. He flashes a badge that reads: “State Board of Dentistry Enforcement Unit.”
“Ma’am… you’re practicing unlicensed dentistry.”
You say:
A1. “I’m not a dentist! I’m a glow technician!”
B1. “But this isn’t dentistry, it’s vibes.”
C1. “You’ll never catch me!”
D1. Offer him a free whitening in exchange for forgetting this ever happened.
➤ You chose A1: “I’m not a dentist! I’m a glow technician!”
He hands you a cease-and-desist order and a $25,000 fine. Your kiosk is shut down. Onlookers gasp as he slaps a sticker on your stand: “UNLICENSED MOLAR MALPRACTICE SITE.”
You are now banned from owning:
UV lights
Whitening strips
Words like “smile,” “beam,” or “glisten.”
M.A.R.P.L.O.T. digitally holds your hand through the process, and after much legal wrangling, you manage to escape to Florida, where you find a huge migration from across the country is driving the price of real estate through the roof.
You begin writing an app that will help people buy houses more easily. When you are halfway through it, you realize that real estate agents are also licensed. You put the app away to forever remain unfinished.
➤ You chose B1: “But this isn’t dentistry, it’s vibes.”
The enforcement officer narrows his eyes. He pulls out a laminated chart titled “Things That Are Definitely Dentistry.”
“Applying substances to teeth?” ✔️
“Using ultraviolet light?” ✔️
“Promising cosmetic improvement to dental appearance?” ✔️
“Mentioning the word ‘enamel’ on your Instagram?” ✔️
He explains:
“Intent doesn’t matter. The law says if it looks like dentistry, smells like dentistry, or makes people smile better, it’s dentistry.”
You're fined $15,000. Your ring light is confiscated and repurposed by the board for “community dental propaganda. ”You attempt to appeal, but the appeal form requires notarization by a licensed dentist.
When you consider your options, enroll in dental school to reclaim your business (estimated cost: $320,000), join a libertarian think tank and write a scathing whitepaper, or start a rival kiosk called “Tooth Feelings” and claim it's performance art, decide that all of that seems like so much work you find a nook in the mall basement where you set up a guerilla flat and play video games by day and sneak out to eat cinnamon buns at night.
➤ You chose C1: “You’ll Never Catch me!”
You run off into the mall’s backrooms, where you find a thriving economy of invisible pet sellers and Radio Shack memorabilia. You decide to take your shop underground as rogue mall cart called “Teeth Noir”
You don a trench coat and fedora. Your new cart has no signage—just a dim lamp and a whisper:
“You want the glow… come to the shadows.”
Customers pay in crypto. You use non-regulated LED strips and call it “aura realignment.”
It works… until a customer live-streams their smile transformation and tags you with #undergrounddentistry.
Within hours, a sting operation involving:
The State Board of Dentistry
The Bureau of Cosmetic Misrepresentation
And an undercover hygienist named Ginger Vittas
…raids your cart. You’re charged with felony incisor interference.
However, public sympathy erupts when your story hits Reddit:
“Mall Kiosk Hero Oppressed by Big Dental.”
A GoFundMe raises $80k. You use it to found the Institute for Tooth Freedom.
Your legacy lives on—until someone sues you for unauthorized use of mint flavoring.
➤ You chose D1: Offer him a free whitening in exchange for forgetting this ever happened
The inspector from the State Board of Dental Orthodoxy shows up unannounced. He’s got a clipboard, a badge, and the smug confidence of someone who failed out of dental school but found purpose in paperwork.
You panic.
“Hey,” you say, forcing a grin, “how about a free whitening session, on the house?”
He squints at you. “Are you trying to bribe a regulatory official with… peroxide?”
You hesitate. “No! No. Just… a complimentary oral light aesthetic rejuvenation!”
He raises an eyebrow.
“You mean teeth whitening?”
“…I mean inner radiance recalibration via non-invasive luminescence.”
He stares you down for a long beat, then shrugs. “Fine. But only if I get the deluxe tray, mint gel, and no one ever hears about this.”
You nod like your life depends on it. Which, in a way, it does.
You pull down the blinds. Twenty minutes later, he walks out with a blinding smile and zero paperwork filed.
You fix your lipstick, adjust your skirt, and breathe a sigh of relief. For now.
But now you’re on the unofficial watchlist—known to inspectors as “That Smooth-Talking Charmer with the Mint Gel.”
But at least you’re calling your own shots…right?
➤ You chose C: You Put Out a Shingle and Start Installing Safety Cameras
You've had it with the gatekeepers. No more red tape. No more endless training modules on "de-escalation best practices." Just good, clean hustle. M.A.R.P.L.O.T. suggests a title, and you hang a crisp new sign:
“SafeSight Solutions – Affordable Home & Business Camera Installations.”And because you believe in transparency (and you watched a LOT of true crime), you install your own safety cameras at the kiosk.
Clients feel secure. You're proud. The cords are tucked. The lenses are sparkling. But so are the official emblems on the cease and desist letter—delivered personally by a man with a clipboard and a badge reading “State Alarm Systems Board.”
Apparently, installing safety cameras constitutes “regulated security technology installation.”
You end up in the hospital with severe facepalm injuries.
➤ You chose D: 🍼 You Try to Work as a Midwife—Just Like You Did Successfully in South Africa for 30 Years
You’ve delivered over 1,200 babies in rural and urban clinics, under candlelight and LED, in joy and emergency. You’ve trained nurses, comforted fathers, and whispered old lullabies to new lungs.
M.A.R.P.L.O.T. agrees and quickly prints our fliers and cards for you to share
Now, newly settled in a U.S. state, you post the modest flier at the local food co-op:
“Experienced Midwife Available – 30 Years Practice – Natural Birth Support – Home & Community Births”
You expect calls. You get one—but it’s from the State Department of Health and Birthing Compliance.
Apparently, despite your decades of hands-on experience, you are now legally defined as “an unlicensed birth facilitator engaging in unauthorized prenatal activity.”
You blink.
They hand you a packet titled: "Pathways to Legal Birth Attendance™ – A Roadmap to Compliant Care.”
You discover that to work as a midwife here, you must enroll in an approved American Midwifery program. Your credits from South Africa don’t transfer.
Cost: $42,000
Timeline: 3 years
Prerequisites: Anatomy courses from U.S.-accredited schools, cultural sensitivity workshops, and CPR training for newborn goats (a clerical error, but mandatory)
✅ Result: You graduate, licensed, and exhausted. You’re now in debt, but legally allowed to do the exact same thing you’ve been doing for 30 years. You also now know to absolutely never say that you are African American, no matter how true that is.
M.A.R.P.L.O.T. hums on and on and on in the background.
Housekeeping
It’s been a busy week and will be a busy weekend. I’m daffy happy that I managed to finish this early, and I hope to do the same with Monday’s post so that my weekend activities don’t interfere with my publishing schedule. We will see how that goes.
Check out these recent appearances where we talk about accreditation, counseling and the crazy world we find ourselves in.
Ideological Oasis with Karen King,
The Radical Center with Leslie Boyce,
Ryan Rogers’—author of The Woke Mind—channel,
Outliers in Exile with Gen X Jeff, and have scheduled two recordings on the horizon. Thank you all!
These are prior podcast appearances that flesh out more details from my time in grad school.
Critical Therapy Antidote—An hour-long podcast that goes deep into the gaslighting and projection I experienced.
Genspect—Leslie Elliot Boyce and I share our stories with Sally Satel, Andrew Hartz, and Carrie Mendoza.
With Lauren Holt on the Radical Center—All three of us share our experiences with radicalized counselor training programs.
With Aaron Kindsvatter on the Radical Center—We discuss the toxic environment in counselor training.
I also have my own YouTube channel with videos I made fully detailing counselor training hell. I have considered making more videos to automate some of the process. Let me know if that would be of interest in the comments.
On the Bookshelf
One book (Lawless) off and two new ones (Allensworth & Rosenberg) on. Both are good and more than a little disturbing in how they highlight the entrenched corruption in our higher education and licensing systems. These two groups are also very intertwined.
Accreditation on the Edge: Challenging Quality Assurance in Higher Education by Susan D. Phillips
The Licensing Racket: How We Decide Who Is Allowed to Work, and Why It Goes Wrong by Rebecca Haw Allensworth
Moral Calculations: Game Theory, Logic and Human Frailty by Laszlo Mero
The New Know-nothings: The Political Foes of the Scientific Study of Human Nature by Morton Hunt
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: New Revised Standard by Marc Brettler, Carol Newsom, Pheme Perkins
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman
We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of the New Elite by Musa al-Gharbi
“Whatever It Is, I’m Against It”: Resistance to Change in Higher Education by Brian Rosenberg
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About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a Clinical Mental Health Counseling master’s degree at the University of Tennessee. What I encountered, however, was a program deeply entrenched in Critical Theories ideology. During my time there, I experienced significant resistance, particularly for my Buddhist practice, which was labeled as invalidating to other identities. After careful reflection, I chose to leave the program, believing the curriculum being taught would ultimately harm clients and lead to unethical practices in the field.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to investigating, writing, and speaking out about the troubling direction of psychology, higher education, and other institutions that seem to have lost their way. When I’m not working on these issues, you’ll find me in the garden, creating art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.
You can also find my work at Minding the Campus