It sounds like the people who issue licenses need a professional license!
More seriously though: Rossmann's troubles are in the domain of business licenses, a licensing system that sounds too complex, staff that are not properly trained in the services they provide (or are incompetent for other reasons), and likely under-staffing in the departments he interacts with. My interpretation is this is more damning of the city itself than the principle of licensing.
As opposed to the other licenses such as the medallion system (Uber drivers clearly can do the job), the interstate commerce commission licenses (there are people without trucks who live off lending their licences), the insane regulations that make drug development cost billions (you need approval from gov every step of the way), the older aviation licensing ( your competitor aviation companies had to approve that there was a "public need" for your extra company to compete with them), the EMT licensing that does the exact same thing as the aviation companies got to do (you get to decide if there is a public need for the existence of your competitors, weirdly they never found the need for competition)?
I'm sure the list goes on, but the notion that a govt worker who knows nothing about the practical side of the business and that does not care about how those insanities of the law will destroy jobs (this is the guy who will fine you) combined with an apathetic worker behind a desk with no incentive or reason to be responsive to you when they f up will make anything safer is just utopian.
I just hope that people who run away from California and nyc realize that these policies just don't work. If you are in doubt about how much of the homelessness in California is the fault of the govt licenses/red tape just look up on YouTube how much bureaucracy you have to go through to build more housing. One guy had to wait 4 years and spend millions in lawyers just to get a no from the city council.
Californian citizens have spent decades fighting tooth and nail to prevent any housing from being created, and have basically turned their local governments into anti-development walls, and pursued every private tactic available as well. But that isn’t an unforeseen problem with government so much as a problem with the government representing the actual wishes of their shitty residents.
More seriously though: Rossmann's troubles are in the domain of business licenses, a licensing system that sounds too complex, staff that are not properly trained in the services they provide (or are incompetent for other reasons), and likely under-staffing in the departments he interacts with. My interpretation is this is more damning of the city itself than the principle of licensing.