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Comment by solutionyogi | Hacker News Reader

Do you know that you need a license to be a barber? Or that in Texas, you need a license to be a florist? [ http://www.agr.state.tx.us/agr/program_render/0,1987,1848_56... ]

I can learn programming on my own (through books or Internet) and get a employment as a programmer working on business critical systems and I do not need to get any license from anyone. But hey, if I want to cut someone's hair, I need to pay my dues to the state?

I think for non medical businesses, the licensing requirements should be removed. We save tax payer's money and there could be more competition in the market place which will benefit the consumer. [And don't worry about protecting the consumer, once you get a bad hair cut from a salon, you will announce it to the world (thanks to the Internet) that the hair salon is bad and you will never visit that place again. Market forces will take care of the crappy businesses.]

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Barbers are actually one of the traditional license-requiring occupations going back centuries, because one of their main jobs used to be shaving men with straight razors, which carried a risk of injury or disease if the barber was poorly trained, or if the equipment was poorly disinfected. It might admittedly be a bit obsolete now.

While modern clippers are less likely to draw blood, that only means they're less likely to transmit bloodborne illnesses. But there are plenty of other diseases that they can transmit.

Wait, what diseases? And are the risks worse than those involved with food preparation or janitorial work (both unlicensed)? EDIT: Lice, obviously, but that's both treatable and not particularly dangerous.

>Wait, what diseases?

http://www.tpub.com/content/armymedical/MD0164/MD01640044.ht...

http://www.sanitarian.com/14_American_Jails___Barbering_and_...

Here in Washington state you do need a food handlers license just to wash dishes in a restaurant. It's not especially onerous, something like $15 to take a fairly simple test. (And even for the lowest-wage employees I imagine most Restaurants will eat the cost of licensing without complaint.)

And I think it's the general assumption that you don't need to worry about disease in a salon that merits the higher barrier of entry to getting a license than a Janitor, where everyone knows that if there's a bunch of human-sourced fluid on the ground, you need to be careful.

Barbers still use straight razors these days (at least mine does! If yours doesn't, find one that does, it's a treat!), and other implements that can cut you.

And food preparation is in fact a licensed occupation: http://www.google.com/search?q=food+handlers+license

I was under the impression barbers/hair salons needed licensing for the disease transmission aspects of that job, which can actually be fairly serious.

Whereas a florists license in Louisiana was defended with: "The state now maintains that regulation is necessary because consumers often phone in orders for third parties and never get to see what they've paid for." [1]

I'm not sure how anyone could defend something like that with a straight face.

1: http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/May-June-2004/scene_joyce...

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