Hello out there. I am trying to install TeX Live to go with my installation of LaTeX, and following the minimal installation instructions for a Unix-like system (http://tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html). The last time I had a need to do this was in college, when I used LaTeX to write my thesis, so my memory of installing this on my old mac is pretty fuzzy.

In any case, all is well until I try to run install-tl. As expected, the installation script attempts to set up folders under the root /usr/local directory, but permission to write to this directory is denied. Indeed, when I navigate to /usr/local through the terminal, and attempt to mkdir from the command line (logged in with my administrative user credentials), I receive a 'permission denied' message.

Anybody know how to login as system, or change the permissions so that I can install here?

Normally /usr/local has 755 permission.
Are your user a member of the wheel?
If not you might want to install it locally.