30% of US Workforce Need License to Perform Their Job | Hacker News Reader

30% of US Workforce Need License to Perform Their Job

brookings.edu

131 pointsjvrossb143 comments

It's easy, but lazy, to look at regulations and say "this is obviously a bad idea." It's harder and more rewarding to think, "what are the forces that generate these regulations, and how can we change those forces?"

One explanation is that they're oriented towards businesses that tend to be sole proprietorships with super low capital requirements - anyone can potentially start running tours or cutting hair or interior decorating, without even renting a storefront. So, those kinds of businesses have much more of an incentive to use legislation to restrict entry, rather than relying on more "inherent" economic barriers. Relatively speaking, they have a higher payoff to lobbying than, say, a pizzeria that needs to invest a lot in ovens, rent, and payroll - if you can afford those, you can afford to either take Pizza Making 101 under a licensing regime, or more realistically fight the licensing regime itself.

How do you change that pattern given a democracy that responds to lobbying? Frankly I'm not sure, but trying to figure it out has a higher payoff than complaining about it.

They also lobby against family owned pizzerias through city hall. Many cities have air ventilation regulations for restaurants lobbied in as a barrier to entry, requiring they install an expensive ventilation system and all it takes is a major fast food chain on the same block as your family run restaurant quietly hiring a few stooges to go down to city hall and complain about the smell and the fines add up until you're forced out of the area.

By your same reasoning, isn't it lazy of you to complain about the article rather than trying to understand the forces that generate these kinds of articles, and thinking about how to change those forces?

But seriously, what's wrong with complaining? Maybe the author of the article doesn't have a good plan for fixing the problem, but what if one of their readers does? What if this "lazy complaining" article brought the issue to someone's attention who might not otherwise have thought about it, and that person has a great idea?

I mean, obviously it would better if the author had root-caused the problem with the legislation and suggested a clever way to push it the other direction. But... they didn't. So what?

You raise a good point. What to do. I don't think lobbying to reform the licensing regime would work in the long run.

I would say, band together and disobey the regime. Disobedience is risky at the individual level, but risk can be spread across large groups to make it tolerable, and worth the reward. Ignore, subvert, circumvent, and carry on business as usual to the highest degree possible until the regime collapses.

What you're describing sounds a bit like the left-libertarian philosophy of Agorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism), and counter-economics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-economics).

I think if you're more concerned with the pernicious effect of hairdressers lobbying for slight barriers to entry than Wall Street lobbying for ZIRP and license to commit fraud, then you've probably already completely lost the ability to measure payoff.

Licences for hairdressing has little to do with restricting entry. It's an attempt to protect people from the harm of incompetent hair dressers - some of the chemical products used can cause chemical burns, for example.

HN is pretty dismissive when talking about jobs that other people do. Hair dressing isn't super hard, but it does require some skill and training. That's why hair dressers are currently on the list of desired professions for immigration into Australia, allowing people to enter Australia as a skilled professional.

http://www.immi.gov.au/Work/Pages/asri/hairdressers.aspx

Your interpretation do not explain why license should be compulsory. You could have a voluntary license, hang it on the door and let customer decide where to go?

People are hopeless at assessing risk. They'd go for lower cost every time, thus regulation is needed to protect them from themselves.

(But I'd agree that a $12,000 cosmetician course is too much for people who only want to braid hair.)

They'd go for the cheaper option until someone is actually injured by that place, then they'd abandon it immediately. This seems like a fine system.

Not for the person who is injured.

The popularity of uninsured unlicensed taxi cabs, even though people get injured and can't pay for the medical treatment, argues against you.

It's weird that HN thinks humans are rational - there are so many examples of irrational behaviour.

Value is relative and it is in the eye of the beholder, much like beauty. Where I want to get is that 12k might sound much but in US the same people would pay almost double sometimes for a car.

The real alternative to regulation is tort--I say this over and over. A pretty functional alternative to licensing, voluntary or not is proof of insurance. Its a way of stating to the customer "someone trusts me enough that they can play you if something goes horribly wrong and you sue." This partially solves the above-mentioned problem of humans who are, depending on how you look at it, poor at assessing risk.

I don't use many of the complicated hairdressing services, so I thought that it was mostly about ensuring that they all knew about the health rules. For instance you don't want any tools used on your head to have bacteria or parasite eggs on them. Nor do you want to be cut by a dirty scissor.

When I saw another commenter's report on the two years of college required to get a cosmetology license in a certain US state, though, that level of education seemed to be quite a high requirement for someone who simply wanted to open a barber's shop.

Dying hair basically involves putting bleach onto someone's head. If you leave it on too long or use too much, their hair falls out. It's not unreasonable to expect some sort of certification for this.

$16,000 is insane though. For less than that in the UK I'm pretty sure you can take a full-fledged construction course and get a job building houses.

Aside from specialists like electricians and plumbers, construction workers in the US are not licensed and usually don't pay for their own training. For the people who are doing general construction work like putting up drywall and hammering shingles into the roof, they start building on day one and learn on the job.

In that case, the standard is applied extremely, even criminally, unevenly.

I can write and sell books advising you to treat your cancer with organic kale and meditation. Following that advice will literally kill you. But I can't give you a tour of the national mall, because... Because what, exactly?

You can't protected all the people all the time, it's simply impossible (or would result in a dizzyingly oppressive Brave New World style situation). At some points, people need to take responsibility for what they do to themselves/let other people do to them, even if some people might suffer a chemical burn from a back alley untrained hairdresser occasionally as a result - just like people do all the time when they try to do these things to themselves at home, which of course is perfectly legal and not to my knowledge a source of many calls for licensing of the ownership and operation of a watertap and a plastic bucket?

Also, licencing hairdressers doesn't even prevent fuck ups from happening there, that's people with nontrivial haircuts (the group of hairdresser clients formerly known as women) pay so much for haircuts. They know that they're hard to get right, and that it matters that the hairdresser knows what they're doing. This is equally true in jurisdictions where hairdressers are licensed and where they are not.

>I can write and sell books advising you to treat your cancer with organic kale and meditation.

Actually, you're legally required to note that your book is not medical advice by a qualified doctor.

> Because what, exactly?

The most honest answer to this question is because free speech protections in the United States are extremely strong, and expressing anti-modern-medicine viewpoints qualifies as (even political) speech.

But then why is the US, allegedly home to unbridled capitalism, so prone to these, more than other countries? Is the political system that much more lobbyable? If so why?

In the UK, searching gov.uk for licenses[1], you need a license for selling alcohol, being a bouncer, driving a limousine, oil and gas exploration, being a gangmaster, dealing in precursor chemicals, having a cinema (in Northern Ireland), disturbing the seabed, various imports and exports eg arms, offshore carbon storage, distilling, taxis, irradiating food (in Scotland), running a betting shop, manufacturing explosives, growing hemp, tattooing, ... etc - most of which are fairly clearly due to specific historical situations, or what are probably fairly evidence based risks (tattooing).

[1] https://www.gov.uk/search?q=license

Oddly enough when a right wing free trade think tank measures how good a country is for entrepreneurs the "socialist" uk with its NHS scores a lot higher than the USA

Because the US never has been home to unbridled capitalism. We've been home to regulated capitalism, and we've been around now we're forgetting the capitalism part.

>"what are the forces that generate these regulations, and how can we change those forces?"

There's an entire field that studies exactly this question: public choice theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/22/155596305/episo...

> A few years ago, Jestina Clayton started a hair braiding business in her home in Centerville, Utah. The business let her stay home with her kids, and in good months, she made enough to pay for groceries. She even put an ad on a local website. Then one day she got an email from a stranger who had seen the ad.

> "It is illegal in the state of Utah to do any form of extensions without a valid cosmetology license," the e-mail read. "Please delete your ad, or you will be reported."

> To get a license, Jestina would have to spend more than a year in cosmetology school. Tuition would cost $16,000 dollars or more.

Texas just passed a law to remove this regulation https://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/08/after-18-years-good-...

> Tuition would cost $16,000 dollars or more.

That was my first thought. How many of these licenses have formal requirements for university or college tuition. Given the money bleeding tactics of tertiary education, it wouldn't surprise me to find their grubby finger prints behind legislative action to prop up their monopoly over the workforce.

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the cosmetology program at the local community college [1] to see what's required. This program prepares students for the Washington State Cosmetology Licensing Exam.

Before enrolling in the cosmetology program, you have to complete these courses (number in parenthesis is number of credits):

   Business and Personal Mathematics (5)
   Human Relations in the Workplace (3)
   English Composition (5)

You can then enroll in the cosmetology program, which takes 5 quarters. Here are the first quarter courses:

   Professional Career (2)
   Cosmetology General Sciences (2)
   Hair Care, Hairstyling & Haircutting (3)
   Chemical Texture Services (2)
   Cosmetology Lab Clinic I (12)

Second quarter:

   Hair Color (2)
   Intermediate Haircutting (2)
   Advanced Chemical Texture Services (2)
   Cosmetology Skin Care (2)
   Cosmetology Lab Clinic II (13)

Third quarter:

   Intermediate Hair Color (2)
   Advanced Haircutting (2)
   Nail Care (1)
   Wigs, Braiding/Extensions (1)
   Cosmetology Lab Clinic III (13)

Fourth quarter:

   Facial Makeup (1)
   Cosmetology Lab Clinic IV (13)
   Advanced Hair Coloring (2)
   Business Skills I (1)

Fifth quarter:

   Cosmetology Lab Clinic V (13)
   Business Skills (1)
   State Board Preparation (4)

I would not have guessed that many classes were needed.

Tuition is $106.84/credit for Washington state residents. The above listed classes come to 109 credits, so $11645.56 tuition.

[1] http://www.olympic.edu/cosmetology-ata-associate-technical-a...

It is very topical. Currently anyone can declare himself a software developer. That largely explains the number of sql injection vulnerabilities, unencrypted sensitive data, unintuitive software UI, unpatched servers, cross site scripting vulnerabilities, and other moronic software design decisions.

For many years there was a sense that what is electronic doesn't matter. That breaking into someone's computer is at best a game while breaking into someone's home is a crime. That hacking and disrupting a power plant is an annoyance while bombing it is an act of war.

But I think it is changing. Non-technical people now realise that software is massively important in our society, and the alarming pace of data breaches is giving a bad reputation to the industry. I think a system of licenses for developers is inevitable.

The idea that licenses would solve that is naive at best and dangerous at worse

I've known people with CS degrees and half of them would throw you a blank stare at those words

> unintuitive software UI

Most licensed engineers are guilty of this

So make sure only those who have a magical paper and studied at fancy schools (where they probably will learn PHP, the basics of sql injection - oh wait, there are new vulnerabilities, but I don't have to worry about these because I didn't learn about them in school) can work on computing, I'm sure quality will shoot right up /s

Well, how was it solved in other industries? Licenses and norms. In the construction industry you can't just build a house. You have a pile of norms and regulations you have to comply with. Today anyone can open a website and start taking passwords.

I'm not looking forward that but do you have a better solution? The way the industry currently works is unsustainable. And I am not even talking about privacy invasion.

Because if you build or design the smallest house improperly, it could collapse and kill people. If you build a crappy WordPress site nothing of similar consequence will happen.

My point is precisely that I think the public starts to realise that what is electronic matters too.

But if you're building any software related to human safety, bad design or bad code quality WILL kill. Just look at Toyota.

Not sure about other parts of the world, but here in BC we do have licensed Software Engineers for these purposes. Most software developers aren't licensed though.

In my country certain electronics engineering jobs require a license. The licensing system and the exams are a joke, they don't test for engineering ability at all, more like trivia and formula-memorization tests.

Fortunately, only a small subset of jobs (radio and TV operations) require it, and the best graduates don't want to work those jobs anyway. Most engineering companies ignore it if it isn't legally required for the position. They instead look at where the applicant got their degree and relevant experience.

A large part of the problem I think is that screening thousands of engineering grads properly for engineering competence would be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming for the government, and no one wants to admit the system is broken.

I suspect any government initiative to regulate software development is going to run into similar problems. I wonder how the medical and legal industries do it.

>I wonder how the medical and legal industries do it.

Do they actually do it with any success? According to this article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/leahbinder/2013/09/23/stunning-n..., medical errors represent the third leading cause of death in the United States. Medical licensing makes it hard to enter the industry, but it doesn't seem to do much good of forcing dangerously incompetent practitioners out of the industry.

As many high payin regulated jobs, thise inside have connections which let them 'recommend' and 'ease' the entrance of close, selcted friend/family in the field.

Then you get dynasties and as much as we pretend regulation to be meaningful when they rot in such way the licenses just become 'favor money' and the whole category starts smelling

Legal licensing does not keep incompetent practitioners from entering the industry, at least in the U.S. This is cultural - there is still an expectation that after you get your license, other lawyers will train you.

Calling yourself a developer is pretty humble, today we have self taught people like me calling themselves engineers and architects. Unlike an actual engineer or architect who will face some kinds of consequences for failure, our current system is too easy on those who build and ship defects.

The closest I saw in my professional career to fixing this problem was at a shop which implemented ISO9000/TL9000 processes in such a way that anyone who signed off to approve a defect would have his career ruined. It seemed to work well for us.

Now that computers and electronics are directing and controlling processes and operations that have a potential to cause damage to life, property and economics, I think that at least certain areas of these "engineering" fields should require proof of competency before practice. We are drowning in stories about all kinds of defects from information leaks to process failures, and very few of the responsible parties have faced any consequences at all.

> Currently anyone can declare himself a software developer

And that's great.

> That largely explains the number of sql injection vulnerabilities, unencrypted sensitive data, unintuitive software UI, unpatched servers, cross site scripting vulnerabilities, and other moronic software design decisions.

No, what explains that is market variety. You want a $200 Facebook clone, you get what you paid for. You want a well built iPhone app for $30000, you'll get what you paid for, probably. No regulations can protect clients from their moronic hiring decisions.

It doesn't cost anything to not design a sql injection in the first place, or to add a function to encrypt data. The problem is not cost, it is incompetence.

While I might agree that the tooling for writing injection-free SQL has improved over the years, certainly back in the day you did have to think about edge cases and be mindful that you weren't allowing anything through. That comes at a cost.

Likewise, especially when it comes to encryption, many schemes have been broken over the years by someone just "adding a function". Actually understanding the vectors one might try to attack what you are doing, again, adds cost.

Finally, as cost is directly proportional to the supply and demand, competent people are generally going to be found in lower supply and in greater demand. Even if you discount the above, competent people are naturally going to cost more.

I would agree if we were talking about much more advanced technologies (like multi-threading or high performance code). But using cryptographic functions or parameterised queries are pretty basic skills. You don't expect every electrician to be able to fix a motherboard but you expect any electrician to know "domestic electrical installation 101".

> parameterised queries are pretty basic skills.

You might be able to say that now, after much publicization and improved tooling. PHP/mysql comes to mind as not even supporting parameterized queries up to somewhat recent history. Ensuring your queries were safe was entirely up to you. A lot of those old code bases still exist and are being exploited, but what evidence is there that people are still writing brand new projects that way?

That said, even in recent times I've run into edge cases that were not covered by parameterization, still leaving me to ensure the query is sane. It takes care to make sure you get it right. Maybe if you're just shuffling basic user input into a database you can make that claim, but not all tasks are so simple.

> You don't expect every electrician to be able to fix a motherboard but you expect any electrician to know "domestic electrical installation 101".

If you are writing web software you probably should know SQL and all of its shortcomings, but I wouldn't expect all programmers to know SQL, even at a basic level. There are countless programming tasks that will never have anything to do with relational databases.

You don't just pay for the number of hours, but for competence too. That's the point.

You want a well built iPhone app for $30000, you'll get what you paid for, probably.

Yeah, probably. That's not nearly good enough. Not even close. There's an enormous list of extraordinarily expensive failures in the software industry. If I pay an actual professional a serious amount of money to do something for me, and it turns out they did a truly awful job (which is pretty common in the software industry), I expect to be able to claim recompense from their professional insurer and/or their professional licencing body. That's part of why I pay so much; the reassurance. Knowing I can rely on it.

Software, of course, has no such professional body, and exists in a twilight world of chancers and incompetents. Why should the software industry get away with knowingly producing crap and charging a fortune for it?

I'd be happy with a two tier approach; at the moment, if I want a wall built, I can pay a professional (with the expectations and protections that comes with the high price) or hire a day-labourer I met in the pub. There is no such choice in software.

> Software, of course, has no such professional body, and exists in a twilight world of chancers and incompetents. Why should the software industry get away with knowingly producing crap and charging a fortune for it?

This is not really correct. If you are hiring a development firm or an independent contractor, you stipulate in your contract that the company or developer must carry some form of errors and omissions insurance. I've never seen a contract that did not have this line item. Any reputable company or independent contractor will already carry this regardless. If they do not, avoid hiring them.

We have such a two tier approach here in BC with licensed Software Engineers. That's fine by me as long as my own work is not regulated.

But there are only ~200 licensed software engineers in BC, so as far as the general market for software development services is concerned, they are irrelevant outside of niche applications where lives are at stake.

This scares the hell out of me. The idea that an organization/government will require programmers to get licenses. I would have never gotten into coding if I hadn't had the freedom to play around with code when I was younger. Reminds me of RMS's, "The Right to Read": debuggers are illegal to use unless you're a licensed programmer. Say what you want about RMS, but you have to admit he's pretty prophetic at times. He predicted the implications of DRM in the mid '90s.

Philip K. Dick was also pretty oracle-like in this regard: "There will come a time when it isn't 'They're spying on me through my phone' anymore. Eventually, it will be 'My phone is spying on me'." He damn near predicted the advent of smartphones+CIQ in the '70s. I imagine he came up with that notion after writing A Scanner Darkly.

My jaw hasn't dropped so low in a long time. As stated in the OP I fail to understand the reasoning behing most of the licenses. Great job bringing this issue up.

Rent-seeking for the ones holding the licenses currently. Prevent market disruption as well.

Why work long, hard, and fairly for your money when you can use the power of the state (a monopoly on violence) to raise prices by creating artificial scarcity for your labor (and beget another monopoly)?

Ah, _you_ can be violent at any time. You can go get a gun with a five minute waiting period or go to the kitchen for a knife or find a blunt object and go be as violent as your pretty little heart desires. Of course the rest of us may react strongly to your violence but that is, of course, as it has always been. Your freedom to be violent ends where our freedom to be violent begins.

Or perhaps you mean violence === an expectation of pro-social behavior.

That's not what I meant. Sorry for the sarcastic tone. I'm saying occupational licenses enforced by the state are a means of granting political privilege to a group of people, at the expense of another group (usually the poor) through the use of coercion, i.e. violence.

This may sound dramatic, but it's true. Because if an unlicensed (non-privileged) person is operating in the market, even if they are reasonably qualified, they will still be targeted by the state on behalf of the licensed (privileged) lobby: First, the unlicensed person may be fined. If they refuse to pay the fine, they may receive a warrant. If they refuse to go to court, agents of the state will knock at their door, threaten to lock them in a cage for not paying their tribute, and ultimately use physical violence to force compliance.

>at the expense of another group (usually the poor)

Because hairdressers are some of the richest people you know?

I'm kind of okay with them having some occupational barriers to entry, actually. It's not like they earn a lot anyway, and it makes up for some of the absolutely egregious and enormous political privileges granted to the 1% which are completely ignored both in this article and by the people commenting on it in this thread.

As a customer, I want these people to be licensed. I don't mind paying more to know that they will do a good job.

There's a big problem of money-chasing hacks that spend minimal effort learning the skills they need so they can claim the profession. I don't want these people doing my hair or fixing my plumbing or doing my electricity. Sometimes I wish software engineering had an effective credentialing mechanism (that isn't university), because there's a lot of idiots in this field.

Yet when the donors of the Brookings institute (like JP Morgan) create artificial scarcity massively in excess of what a hairdresser can do, that they can profit from, they can rely upon Brookings' silence.

Percentages might help. Out of the 30% how many are teachers, engineers, skills trades, doctors, nurses, etc? I'm guessing a ton of these positions everyone would shrug and say yes, I want my doctor to have a license.

For the positions that might not be obvious why they require a license I wonder how many are because someone fucked up and caused a problem? Probably more than you might think. They generally just don't make rules up.

So maybe 10% of jobs that require a license (3% of overall jobs) actually need to be addressed. You'd never know that reading this piece. Reading this piece you are left with a sense of outrage the government is bad, why are they messing with people blah blah blah instead of an actionable list.

Let's fix the list, but realize that this is a political body writing this with specific goals probably paid for by a deep pocket interest.

why does your teacher need a license? background check, sure, but license?

Individual private tutors (in the UK at least) need a background check if they teach children under 18, but not a license. Teachers of whole classrooms in schools need a QTS, which is a qualification demonstrating their skills as teachers. This seems reasonable since it gives a fairly simple way for parents and schools to evaluate whether a teacher is completely useless or not (but not that they are a great teacher - a license probably could never tell you that).

I'm interested to know why you (I assume) think licensing teachers is a bad idea.

My teacher needs a license to show that he has completed education that should make him competent, continues to maintain competency, and has not faced any questions of conduct or discipline which should rightfully deprive him of such license.

I would like this strengthened to include that the individual is sound on a psychological or psychiatric level, since many teachers work with children. True story, I faced a lot of abuse during my childhood and so was in therapy to deal with it. Waiting to see the therapist one day, I got to stare down an abusive former teacher who happened to be in the waiting room, waiting for psychiatric services. Since her employer manages its own health insurance, they knew about this person's history of psychiatric problems because they paid the costs for her services. But the local teachers union has made it so that unless you actually rape a child during class, there's no chance of being fired from the school board.

That's the core of the problem, the license means little because the union will generally fight tooth and nail for any teacher that faces discipline.

Which would you rather have, a teacher that taught and inspired your 6 year old kids, or a generic licensed teacher?

The union defends their members, that's part of their job. It's what prevents administrators from arbitrarily firing people they don't like - or, worse, people who stand up against malpractice on the administrative side. The administration has access to their own specialists who can and do "fight tooth and nail" for their side.

When someone is actually incompetent any halfway competent administrator will be able to fire them. It's not hard - it just requires collecting some actual evidence and documenting that you followed the processes correctly.

That is a false dichotomy. A teacher with a license doesn't mean 'generic'.

The vast majority of people with a mental health problem pose zero risk to children.

Abusive teachers should be dealt with without a blanket ban on anyone with a mental health problem.

Did you realise that your comment was stigmatising of people with mental health problems?

This is the second time you have said that I'm stigmatizing all mental health patients because I have pointed out cases where a person with problems in that broad category engaged in damaging behavior against someone else.

I don't think that "everyone with a condition in the DSM/ICD" from sleep disorders to encopresis should feel like they are the victim of my comments. I certainly don't intend it and after rereading my comments I can't see how a reader can draw that conclusion. I even don't want bipolar, borderline, narcissistic etc. types to be offended by my comments.

I think that the school board is at fault for not inquiring why a person who works primarily with children is receiving psychiatric services. No, you should not be a teacher or in any profession dealing with children if you cannot behave properly, whether it's because you have unresolved personal issues or because you have a disability where you simply cannot realize that certain acts are not allowed or inappropriate. When the risks are so great - not only the damage to the individual himself, which can persist long after the abusive employee's own death, but the possibility that the damaged individual can hurt others and society: prison and/or social support isn't cheap - it's imprudent and neglectful to not follow up when an indicator appears.

I think following up on these indicators would benefit other professional license regimes, not only teachers. Do you want a cop on the street who suffers from PTSD or substance abuse addiction? How about a suicidal airline pilot who may suffer from delusions? Clinical social worker with NPD or history of abusing his own family? For an engineer or cosmetologist it's probably not important.

For all of us individually, there are certain professions that we aren't cut out for. That's just life and I don't think it bothers most of us. What makes you think I'm free of mental health problems myself anyway?

So, here's one example of your stigmatising views and assumptions:

> I think that the school board is at fault for not inquiring why a person who works primarily with children is receiving psychiatric services.

You assume the school board didn't make any inquiry. For all you know they did. But more than that you assume that merely receiving psychiatric services is enough to need a check - regardless of displayed behaviour. You're saying "mental health problem == risky", when you have no evidence to support that. Feel free to provide something to support it.

> No, you should not be a teacher or in any profession dealing with children if you cannot behave properly,

Here you link poor behaviour to mental illness. Most poor behaviour has nothing to do with mental illness. Most people with a mental health problem live fairly normal lives.

You should probably stop using bullshit reasons to restrict the work that people can do, especially when those bullshit reasons are a result of ignorance.

> My <Insert Profession Here> needs a license to show that he has completed education that should make him competent, continues to maintain competency, and has not faced any questions of conduct or discipline which should rightfully deprive him of such license.

How does this sentence apply to teachers and not every other profession?

An oldest economist article [1] that appeared on HN [2] opened my eyes to this issue.

[1] http://www.economist.com/node/18678963?story_id=18678963&fsr...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2548399

Doing minimal safety training seems reasonable, I think. If it cost $200 to enter a profession, that wouldn't be so bad.

But two years and $10,000? What planet do these legislators think they're on?

(Licensingindustrylobbyus, probably)

It depends, to cut hair its no biggie, if you are dying/treating hair with chemicals than can burn the crap out of your skin I can easily see why this is required. We are litigious in the US, this is the cost of doing business.

> It depends, to cut hair its no biggie

It's a little more dangerous than you might immediately think. You're working with sharp blades and hot objects.

Edit: Oh, apparently, there's a serious risk of disease transmission. I hadn't considered that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2549477

That's still not years and thousands of dollars of training though.

Couldn't a private trusted 3rd-party company provide certification to verify my barber went to school for x or knows what he is doing?

Why does the government need to charge outrageous fees under serious threat if they dont'? (Honest question)

The concepts of trust in x organization is much clearer today thanks to the internet.

>Couldn't a private trusted 3rd-party company provide certification to verify my barber went to school for x or knows what he is doing?

This is basically solved by franchising, but that also adds cost to the producer.

But whatever model you chose it puts the responsibility of informing yourself about the safety of your options on the consumer.

People like when their choices are "safe by default" so they like regulation, even if it doesn't accomplish what it states as long as it appears to be effective it's going to be supported. I can't really decide if that's bad or not, in most cases the safety will be there anyway and if it inspires the consumer confidence it allows the economy to function more efficiently.

The government is the trusted 3rd party.

They price gouge because it turns out that they have a monopoly. The private company would also price gouge because they would also be a monopoly - only you would not be able to lobby the private company and vote for a different one...

> The private company would also price gouge because they would also be a monopoly

Why would they also be a monopoly?

> Why would they also be a monopoly?

Because otherwise there would be a proliferation of licensing companies. This would lead to competition on price (good!) but also on standards/easier certification (bad?). Customer confusion also becomes an issue here - do you really want to have to research which licensing bodies have acceptable standards as well as which providers have good prices and results before everytime you cut your hair?

I think that the ideal option is that the licensing is run by a not for profit that has the government on its board but which is run at arms length.

>The private company would also price gouge because they would also be a monopoly - only you would not be able to lobby the private company and vote for a different one...

They needn't necessarily be a monopoly; there's nothing stopping multiple certification companies coexisting. Providing certification is not a natural monopoly.

Competing with the government who can put the non-accredited businesses in question out of business or fine them a large amount of money is not fair competition for any private company... so that naturally leads to a monopoly as the OP points out.

See my other post.

Consumers don't know which certification is worth what. If you run a business you're always getting calls from bullshit consumer certification companies trying to extract money from you by playing on your anxiety about which recommendations consumers trust.

Government isn't charging outrageous fees. The outrageously expensive tuition is usually provided by a private party, not the state.

Actually, it is often not the government that charges outrageous fees. Very often, a system is in place where you need to get a license from a private provider, and the private providers of licenses charge outrageous fees.

Incidentally, this explains how many of these certification rules are established in the first place: the certifiers lobby for it, because it brings them profits. (I still believe that the majority of certification rules happen because somebody messed up, which led to calls for stricter regulation.)

And? Do you know how much it costs to become a food handler? Not thousands of dollars and years worth of college.

If the issue was litigiousness, we could require people to carry insurance. Oh wait, we do that too. So, what was the licensing for again?

Yeah, this is really about stifling competition. You notice whenever they add licensing requirements that kind of stuff is always grandfathered in. If it were really about health and safety existing practitioners would be required to take the same classes.

Some licensing does require continuing education or regular testing.

I think the argument for some of these licenses is that if the licensee screws up you can report them to a proper government agency who will investigate them. If a cab driver refuses service for a discriminatory reason in my town he can be reported to the the taxi cab bureau, or if my barber has unsanitary practices to health and human services.

If a cab driver refuses you service take the next one. Why is that a problem?

And the barber example makes my point. When they added licensing for cosmetology in my state existing cosmetologists were grandfathered in. They got licenses because they'd already been doing the work. But if you wanted to enter the field you had to go to cosmetology school.

If a cab driver refuses you service take the next one.

While the population in large cities is growing, plenty of people don't live in one. "Take the next one" simply isn't an option for those people (I speak from experience, having lived in the countryside).

In this day of Uber and mobile phones it's hard to believe you can't get a cab pretty much anywhere.

How about a remote valley in the Andes?

(Somewhat tongue in cheek, but it's good to remember that there's more to life - and perhaps even potential markets.)

Yea, they did roughly the same think with Realestate Brokers in California. When the Lobbiests tried to win over Gov. Scheartzenegger, he saw right through the ploy, and vetoed the bill. Gov. Brown caved in. That day I retired my strict D card! I still astonished we pay Realtors so much money for essentially a smile, and omissions and errors insurance? Eight classes and a cheezy exam, dubious experience and 3% commission? Actually, in this day and age, I thought Realtors would be extinct?

Most of these licenses arise because the people practicing them wind up hurting, or even killing people. Examples include tour guides running over pedestrians while driving and entertaining [0]. Or software engineers writing code that has probably killed people [1], or "beauticians" being forced to work in near-slavery conditions [2], or professional drivers killing people [3].

0. http://m.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/About-to-be-silenced-S-F...

1. http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_s...

2. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/18/nyregion/cuomo-to-offer...

3. http://pando.com/2014/01/02/uber-driver-hits-kills-6-year-ol...

> Most of these licenses arise because the people practicing them wind up hurting, or even killing people.

Correction: Most of these licenses arise because those in the industry want to create a barrier to entry and use examples of morons doing their job poorly as evidence of need.

Exactly. And I feel it's expanding rather than shrinking.

Of course it's both.

In many of these cases, the public has a strong enough interest to justify licensing requirements. E.g., it would be impractical to eliminate CDLs, licensing for food prep/barbers, etc.

Once these licensing requirements exist, it's easier to justify increasing requirements as a way of increasing the barrier to entry.

This "everyone is a moron we don't need regulations if everyone was a genius LIKE ME" attitude isn't particularly convincing. But it pervades this thread. It's full of people who can't imagine even the possibility that a regulation could be created for the good of people instead of with literally evil intent. If this is the new face of the anti-regulation side of the debate we've really reached a new low; it's not a debate anymore, it's rabid mindless religious extremism.

> But it pervades this thread. It's full of people who can't imagine even the possibility that a regulation could be created for the good of people instead of with literally evil intent.

Who writes the regulations? Ask yourself that. It's not the regulators, they just enforce the rules.

Regulations always start with the best of intentions, but are almost always co-opted by industry lobbyists to create barriers to entry in the guise of helping the common good. That hurts the common good and hurts the industry in the long run, all for the sake of lining the pockets of entrenched players.

I don't see you proposing a solution to this. I just see name calling.

I didn't propose a solution because it isn't a problem. Regulations protect people by forcing corporations, generally, to do something that's more expensive but better for their workers/customers/the general public because our society has decided (by voting) that we want certain standards to exist; I want to be able to walk into a restaurant and know that I won't get food poisoning and die without having to consult some privately owned and non-accountable review system. I want workers to be treated decently so they can support a family and be part of a livable civil society. These are basic, basic things that we've developed over thousands of years of civilization as expected common goods that the extremist hyper-libertarians like you see here are trying to destroy because they get in the way of someone's ability to make money by exploiting others. Because that's what deregulation does; it allows people with money to abuse the capitalist system to exploit others and make more money, since regulation is almost always used to prevent exploitation.

Sure the barrier to entry problem exists but honestly it's minor in comparison to the value the regulations have. It is HUGELY blown out of proportion by people here. Maybe it's more expensive to run your business safely and prove that you are but honestly I don't care, if you can't run a safe business society doesn't need to allow you to have one. We allow businesses to limit their liability in exchange for being good citizens; the regulations just make sure the businesses are holding up their end of the deal because we've seen through history, without them, businesses are disgustingly exploitative and destroy the lives of citizens and entire societies (see robber barons).

> I didn't propose a solution because it isn't a problem.

How would you know? Do you own a business? Have you ever run one? I have and do.

Are you talking from experience or are you just talking?

> Regulations protect people by forcing corporations, generally, to do something that's more expensive but better for their workers/customers/the general public

No, they don't. That's how you want them to work. It's naive to simply assume that's how it is, while having zero experience with either running a business or enforcing those same regulations.

Virtually every single regulation on the books right now was written by industry lobbyists. You don't even address this point? What do you think they're putting in those regulations?

Almost all the regulations are easy to comply for a large corporation, because they'll just throw people at it until they're compliant ... and very difficult for a small business, because they don't have the ability to jump through the hoops.

This has nothing to do with safety. Businesses which don't do a good job of whatever it is that they're doing go out of business fairly quickly or learn how to do it right. Those regulations are almost never enforced.

It's the mountain of paperwork, reporting requirements, licensing requirements, it's those sorts of things that choke the life out of a small business and they are designed to do just that.

> general public because our society has decided (by voting)

That is really naive. Your representatives don't write laws. They just sign them. And they sign whatever is put in front of them and they are told to sign. Who do you think tells them to sign those laws? Hint: It's not you.

In this disaster of a post you assume that all regulations are evil and conclude that all regulations are evil; there are certainly a lot of words there, it's too bad you aren't actually saying anything.

I could take your post apart piece by piece but honestly almost every claim you've made is laughably absurd; your assumption about the level of corruption that supposedly completely dominates every moment of the lives of every regulatory decision maker is a joke, super villians like that aren't as common as you seem to believe. Every discussion starts with some token of good faith; a willingness to accept that people who disagree with you are not literally Satan. Without that you cant reasonably communicate with anyone about this topic so I'd suggest you do away with the extremist rhetoric or stay out and let the adults talk.

You are correct, the licenses arise because they aim to protect people. However, the intentions need to be separated from the reality.

Three useful questions to ask when situations like this arise are: - As opposed to what? - At what cost? - Is there any evidence?

Do the regulations actually protect both sides of the agreement?

> Most of these licenses arise because the people practicing them wind up hurting, or even killing people.

From the article: "In fact, across all states, interior designers, barbers, cosmetologists, and manicurists all face greater average licensing requirements than do EMTs".

Something else of note is that the majority of occupational license requirements exclude felons. Sometimes they'll put verbiage into the law saying that once someone has completed the requirements they can petition the board for an exemption, but what person would put in 1000+ days for a license to cut hair without knowing if their work was for naught?

A lot of the examples seem to involve professions involving grooming people - barbers, manicurists, etc. While the required training amount might be out of line, it seems like some state supervision for these professions is needed because unhygienic or unsafe practices could serious consequences - ie, spreading disease.

So this seems less totally insane than it might.

This is licensing based on paying fees and completing classes, not - as in health codes for restaurants - based on the cleanliness or safety of the work place.

Most states require food prep employees to carry some form of food safety certification.

Any additional checks are above and beyond this and other basic requirements.

Of course, there's a good reason that both exist in food prep. Downgrading a restaurant only after the typhoid outbreak isn't really serving the best interest of the public. And continuous monitoring/enforcement is too expensive.

Right. Licensing these professions is completely reasonable. But years of training and extortionate costs to acquire a license is nowhere near reasonable.

Although not directly related to the article, in some fields you just need to work under someone that has a contractors license. Many plumbers, electricians, builders, etc, aren't licensed, but they are employed by someone that is, and the owner of the company signs off on their work saying it is acceptable.

If you'd like to see the fantasy paradise that would exist if we abolished these foolish regulations, come to England some time. Then hire the first guy in the phone book who calls himself a "plumber".

You would not believe the number of unnecessary holes in my house directly caused by a single plumber's mate (defined: guy willing to work for £8/hr) attempting to do his profession before we could physically remove him from the property.

Same goes for "builder", and to an extent even "electrician." It's amazing to watch, coming from America where people are required to be qualified for their jobs.

Don't get me started on tradespeople in England. My mum calls out random people to do jobs once in a while (plastering, carpentry/joinery, decoration, general DIY) and with the exception of one plumber, they have been low skilled, lazy and they did not care for doing a proper job.

The worst thing is that even these idiots are in demand and struggle to return calls.

I've never lived in London, but I find this story intriguing, esp given the stories of the rigorous exams needed to become a black cab drive in Lomdon.

I'd expect that there are private certifications or organizations that guarantee a certain level of competency. Otherwise some sort of review site for contractors like Angies list should either exist or be a massive opportunity in a market like you describe.

There are private certifications eg [1] and review sites eg [2].

[1] http://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/find-an-electrician/

[2] http://www.mybuilder.com/

Odd about electricians, because they're regulated with the whole "Part P" business that prevents you DIYing it.

Text only cache because site is broken at the moment: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.bro...

This has always baffled me about the US. Always complaining about the bureaucracy and lack of freedom of "socialist" countries, yet maintaining this absurd professional licensing that defies parody.

People in the US complain about the lack of freedom and bureaucracy in the US as well, a lot. The US isn't a Capitalist, low tax, low regulation, small government system (and hasn't been in a very long time); it's a highly regulated welfare state, with mid-upper tier taxation.

We have a total government system the size of Japan's entire economy. What else could come out of something that massive, other than extreme regulation, and eventual suffocation? It's not like they're just going to suddenly stop passing thousands of new regulations each year. The professional political class has nothing else to do, it's partially how they justify their existence.

>People in the US complain

This article isn't 'people' complaining. It's a mouthpiece mainly for a group of select US corporations.

You know they don't give two shits about hairdresser barriers to entry, either. Judging by the list of members, they want deregulation for the finance industry.

Licensing requirements and existence of a welfare state or high taxation are fairly different uses of government that don't necessarily go together. For example, Texas has low taxes and a poor welfare system, but is quite enthusiastic about licensing requirements.

Funny. The Greek economy has been criticized by many economic commentators for also having this kind of "closed-shop" paradigm. Not sure what their percentage is in comparison to the U.S.

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/does-occupational-licensing-pr...

"[A]n Oregon board regulating cosmetology raised the number of training hours required for entry from 1,500 to 2,500. According to Cato Institute author David Young, pressure for the change came not from disgruntled cosmetology consumers but from beauty schools that were able to charge more tuition and serve more consumers in school training salons."

NEVER read a think tank's opinion before checking out who funds them first:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brookings_Institution#Funders

In this case, the fact that JP Morgan is a major funder should make you more than a little suspicious that they're proposing tearing down 'regulations'.

When they try to convince you it's a good idea they talk about hairdressers. When they start writing bills to give to Congress it becomes about reducing capital requirements and deregulating derivatives.

Companies like JP Morgan love regulation. They have the regulators in their pocket and it helps keep out competition.

So explain why they are fighting tooth and nail to deregulate derivatives, if they love it so much.

Brookings has a long history of very biased studies. They seem to decide the outcome first, and then carefully craft a study to get the desired outcome. And since Brookings is constantly advocating for less regulation and "free markets" - no matter the cost to society - I'm not surprised that they found some way to find that most people need licenses. Honestly, it isn't even worth my time to read the study to figure out how they gamed the data. I'm just posting this comment in case readers aren't familiar with Brookings reality distortions.

Can you substantiate your comment?

Anytime you purchase a permit for anything from the government you should stop and realize the government has confiscated your right to perform that task and it's selling your rights back to you.

Interesting tidbit:

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation surveyed over 12,000 small business owners in 38 states and 82 metropolitan regions to determine how friendly cities and states are towards small businesses. Licensing was “the most important regulatory issue” and “second only to the strength of the local economy in determining how friendly a state is to small business.”

Working in US is getting difficult for us.

That's the problem with having 52 states having many smaller decentralised legislatures makes it much easier for low level corruption to exist.

Look at the dodgy court in Texas the "specialises" in patent law and the cases of tiny hamlets with massive police forces and speed traps.

Just as a comparison, in the 1950s, only 5% of workers needed a government license to work.

I'm a licensed CSSTWP http://csstwp.com/ ;-)

Citation for the 30% figure?

"The more plentiful the laws, the more corrupt the state." -Plato

"When there are many restrictions in the world

The people become more impoverished

The more laws are posted

The more robbers and thieves there are"

- Lao Tzu

I don't think Plato's critique there is necessarily getting at what you're intending. Plato is arguing that direct commands by a ruler are superior to written statute laws, because they allow for the use of good judgment and have less scope for bureaucratic idiocy and corruption than a lengthy statute book does. He's not against the state imposing restrictions on anyone, he just thinks it should be done by direct command of wise philosopher-kings, rather than by codified law.

His system if anything quite strongly restricted what people could do in the economic sphere. The "producers" were one of the three classes kept strictly separate (the other two being warriors and rulers), and must follow the directions of the rulers, as enforced by the warriors, in order to ensure that production is in keeping with the needs and morals of the polis.

This is probably a good thing.. mainly for people to have job security.

John Oliver rant about this in 3..2..1..

License licenses license license.

this article makes a lot of broad assumptions ("If licensing an electrician is for public safety then...") and relatively shallow conclusions ("upholsterers need a license, wtf?") based on them.

Full of weasels without a doubt.

Why did you cut off the quote? The full quote is: "If the rationale for licensing an electrician is to protect public safety, it is difficult to see what rationale supports licensing travel guides."

Moreover, the assumptions they're making are charitable. I think most people agree with licensing engineers, electricians, doctors and the like where doing their job wrong has serious consequences. But for the same reason, it's less clear what public benefit there is behind requiring florists, interior designers or ballroom dancers to be licensed in order to practice their craft.

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