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Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

This mainly relates to non-scalable industries where everything depends on simply reproducible labor not requiring a lot of training - like yes, barbershops, or real estate. I think it's more of good than bad - it prevents flocking of people into these industries resulting in cutthroat competition, low quality, and desperation of everyone involved. People simply find some other better trades instead.

Sometimes i feel like something like that must be introduced into software development, too: too many random people here, trying to compete only in price. It doesn't work of course, savvy clients see the real picture, but it drops the shadow on the industry in general, like people don't want to learn now to code out of the fear of having to compete with $5 an hour Indians.

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Low quality doesn't automatically follow from cutthroat competition, at least not nearly as automatically as it follows from a lack of competition. "Too much" competition might result in shipping too quickly to capture market share, but how bad the product that is shipped can be and still make profit is limited by what people will buy - they might as well decide to wait for a competitor's product instead, and typically the wait isn't very long. "Too little" competition, on the other hand, means you don't have a choice; it certainly gives vendors more time to perfect the product, and more money since they can ship later and charge more - but it also removes much of the incentive to improve the product since now it doesn't have to be better than a competitor's, it must only be better than nothing, which is not a very high bar.

Now it'd be nice if we could have an amount of competition that is "just right" - just enough to improve the product, not enough to ship half-baked stuff while desperately trying to conceal its problems. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get there, and since all arrangements that I know of overshoot in one direction or the other, we have to pick one of the extremes, and I think "too much" is way better for the consumer than "too little."

Would society be better off if programmers managed to restrict entry into the profession as did lawyers and doctors? On general grounds, I rather doubt it as described above, but those programmers who're already in the profession would most certainly benefit from it!

I would love to know your justification for regulating barbers and stylist. A greenhouse manager requires certification for pesticides which can make sense, but a florist merely goes out of business if they are awful but require certifications. Regardless, from 2013 here is the list in my state. http://explorer.dol.state.ga.us/mis/Current/cerliccurrent.pd...

The document is a little odd as some jobs specifically call out licensing in the state while others mention national certifications (baking food anyone?). Interesting that Computer Engineer is in there, broad enough to catch a lot of people who might not expect it.

Stylists do more than just cut hair. It's not unskilled labour. Especially when it comes to dying hair you need to understand the chemical reactions involved and the damage they can do to the skin and hair.

There are a lot of people working in the field who just barely know how to cut hair. But the better ones do more than just design work.

EDIT: For context, in my country (Germany) a lot more occupations are regulated than in the US, including hair stylists / barbers (I don't think we have the distinction). While I agree that for some of the jobs the regulations are too harsh and there are too many hurdles to get foreign qualifications and job experience recognized, I think that the existence of these regulations, especially for jobs that involve exposing customers to hazardous materials, is for the better.

One would like to think licensing is about ensuring quality, but if one actually takes a look at the reality, one realizes that licensing is about restricting the field and paying to play, and almost never about ensuring quality.

Even professional licenses are like this, unless you are a complete idiot it's not the knowledge that's the problem (e.g. passing the exam, if there is one), it's paying for the requirements (e.g. the degree and/or the continuing license fee) or fitting the requirements (e.g. being a foreign worker).

Simple justification: limit the number of people in these industries by creating an artificial barrier of entry. Which is a necessity for every industry not having a natural barrier of entry. Otherwise, things net nasty.

For a good example of what a non-scalable industry without a barrier of entry looks like, go to every freelance programmer marketplace. You can compete in such a marketplace in just one way: working dirt cheap AND scamming your clients. Not a win for either freelancer or a client. If you needed to pay $1000 a month for being on the freelancer site (imagine there is just one freelancer site out there, i.e. we are speaking of cost of a license to be a programmer), things will turn out much better instantly. Same works for barbers and real estate agents.

Much better for you, you mean.

The reason you usually need to work dirt cheap to compete in those freelance programmer marketplaces is that you live in a place with a high cost of living.

So you meant to say that with programming, the problem is complicated because it opens up the market from people from all over the world, and for industries that can't be outsourced, like barbershops, things aren't that bad?

I guess I just don't see an open market with no barrier to entry as "bad".

The possibility of outsourcing does force people to face this fact head-on, but even with barbershops barriers to entry mean higher prices for the end-consumer, higher operating costs for the barbers and unemployment for the almost-barbers who are excluded.

What is a "non-scalable industry?"

It is when effort and income are linked 1-1.

So where to increase income/profit you need to have more hours worked. So the only way for that to happen is to hire more people or work longer hours.

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