11 ms·

It is logical to require you to have a license to fill a cavity for safety reasons. It is not logical to require a license to cut hair. Yes, it will boost earni

by seibelj 11y ago

It is logical to require you to have a license to fill a cavity for safety reasons. It is not logical to require a license to cut hair. Yes, it will boost earnings of barbers, who are generally lower-middle class, but it simply doesn't make logical sense.

nedwin 11y ago
I'm also not so sure that occupational licensing is the primary driver of the cost of healthcare in the US.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Is there a primary driver? It seems to me that it's the effect of many forces, each of which is probably worth addressing. When I get medical bills, I have a lot of difficulty trying to figure out why the service I consumed could possibly cost as much as I am being charged. But I apparently agreed to pay whatever as a condition of obtaining the service.
pdonis 11y ago
> It is logical to require you to have a license to fill a cavity for safety reasons. It is not logical to require a license to cut hair. You mean there are no "safety reasons" involved in cutting hair? A person with sharp implements around your head and neck poses no safety risk? Also, even if the "safety reasons" are more compelling for dentists than for barbers, that's still not a reason to have the government doing the safety checks by means of licensing. Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value, whereas government has an incentive to impose any requirements that have enough of a political constituency, whether or not they add value.
- krapp 11y ago
  >Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value, "value" wouldn't have to mean increased safety for the consumer, though. The incentive on the part of private enterprise could just as well be to impose any requirements that increase profits, whether or not they add value.
  - pdonis 11y ago
    If there is no government regulation to impose restrictions by force, then a requirement that doesn't add value can't increase profits, because customers won't accept it; there will always be some competitor who sees the potential to out-compete you by not having a requirement that customers don't want.
    - notahacker 11y ago
      Which is nice in theory, but absolute nonsense in practice, as evidenced by the number of no-value-add diploma mill accreditors and homeopathic regulatory bodies even under a regulatory regime where organizations can actually potentially be prosecuted for deliberately misleading people.
      - pdonis 11y ago
        In other words, the regulatory regime provides no actual benefit, yet we are paying for it with our tax dollars. Thank you for making my point for me.
        notahacker 11y ago
        You honestly don't think that fewer people would get the medical treatment they needed if diploma-mill qualified charlatans were able to represent themselves as actual doctors or surgeons rather than having to go down the homeopathy/"alternative therapy" route?
        pdonis 11y ago
        Now you're talking about changing the current regulatory regime, not about getting rid of it--you're talking about diploma mills being able to give M.D. degrees that get recognized by things like state doctor accreditation boards. I agree that would be worse than what we have now, but it's hardly an absence of regulation; it's just making the regulations stupider than they already are. A true absence of regulation would mean that individual people would have to make their own judgments about who was reliable, in health care and everything else. Sure, anyone could call themselves a "doctor", but that term would mean nothing by itself; it certainly wouldn't confer any special privileges on the person using it. If you wanted to know if a "doctor" was qualfied, you would look at his actual qualifications: where he got his degree, if he has one (and was it a diploma mill or a real school), where did he do his internship and residency, what sorts of cases has he worked on, what is his success rate in treating various conditions, etc. (Many people already look at these things even in our current regulatory regime, as evidenced by the number of websites whose business model is to provide such information.) Would some people make bad decisions in such a regime? Of course. But people make bad decisions now. The question is which regime do you think produces worse decisions: a regime where everyone knows they are individually responsible for making good decisions, not just about what health care to get but about who to get it from, or the regime we have now, where people are encouraged to just accept particular credentials (M.D. degree, "board certified", on the list of preferred providers for their health insurance) as sufficient and not look any further.
- zo1 11y ago
  People are overly distrustful of private entities. Likewise, they're also overly trustful of public entities. It's implicit in almost every argument you will have when advocating free-market solutions over state-monopoly and state-regulation type solutions. And this applies to practically any problem. Unfortunately, no one wants to see the elephant in the room. Both types of entities will do (or at least have the risk-of doing) what is in their own best interest. But only one can have a violence-backed monopoly advantage.
  - dsr_ 11y ago
    A government which is tightly constrained in the use of violence by laws and social custom is vastly preferable to a free market in violence.
    - brbsix 11y ago
      You've posed a false dichotomy. No one is talking about a free market in violence. A free market is tightly constrained by social custom, ostracism, and economic forces that are often more powerful than law. Lack of regulation does not make violence any more tolerable.
      - ricardobeat 11y ago
        A free market is only constrained by the morality of individuals, which as everybody knows can quickly detour from the social custom. Ostracism is never a concern if you have power and/or money. A lack of regulation doesn't make violence more tolerable, but makes it more appealing.
        skylan_q 11y ago
        A free market is only constrained by the morality of individuals There is no one who advocates for free markets who advocates against laws. Killing people is murder, hurting them is causing injury, etc... It's constrained by laws, ethics, and economic forces.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  >Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value, Private organisations have an incentive to increase profit, even if it means a loss of public safety. Accountability only provides economic leverage when legal remedies for tort and malpractice are cheap and easily available. If they aren't, private organisations have no incentive at all to act responsibility. Often they don't. I think hairdressing may be a special case because salons serve a local area, and it's a very social profession, so bad word of mouth can do a lot of damage. But that's not true of most businesses. In fact of the drivers of the corporation as a business model is exactly the freedom it provides from personal and social responsibility. Instead of being personally accountable to customers, larger corporations operate at a level where local reputation is meaningless, and only governments, class actions, and the occasional PR disaster can punish bad faith operation. (Of all of those, PR disasters are often the least damaging.) There are licensing requirements for corporations trading in specific fields and for specific products. But there's no such thing as a valuable and reassuring general certificate of corporate professionalism and responsibility - which is perhaps a strange thing considering the power and influence corporations have.
  - zanny 11y ago
    > If they aren't, private organisations have no incentive at all to act responsibility. Often they don't. So the dentist in the license-free world have no ecnomic motivation to not just rip peoples teeth out with a pair of pliers? People can self-regulate for risk and safety when they have complete information about the business. That would not have been available decades ago, but today we have the Internet and can easily move to interconnect everyone with common protocols to discern reviews and criticism of business to give consumers a more informed choice when choosing potentially dangerous trades, without crippling innovation and entrepreneurship within their domains.
    - mcguire 11y ago
      How much information do you have about the safe and effective practice of dentistry? How much information does the average American have about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines?
- zzalpha 11y ago
  Private organizations could do the same safety checks Someone didn't learn anything from the 2008 crash and the issue of private ratings agencies... Privatize safety checks and businesses will shop around to get a certification. Believe it or not, capitalism doesn't solve every problem.
  - skylan_q 11y ago
    So what you're saying is: It doesn't solve the problem of the combination of gov't corruption and private sector corruption, so private safety regulators/inspectors would never be able to keep anything safe.
  - nsxwolf 11y ago
    And some ratings agencies would compete to be the one with the best reputation, which would lower the value of shopping around for substandard ones.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      Why? The customer isn't the consumer of bonds, it's the underwriters and borrowers. By stamping shit debt as AAA, they were providing a wonderful level of service for their customers -- the bankers.
    - pessimizer 11y ago
      Only in the fantasy world where people have the time and expertise to evaluate the relative merits of hairdresser ratings agencies.
  - ad_hominem 11y ago
    Someone didn't learn about the de facto monopoly the SEC (federal gov't) gave the Big Three (Moody's, S&P, Fitch) at the time of the meltdown through its NRSRO status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_recognized_statistical_rating_organization#Subprime_mortgages.2C_CDOs.2C_and_the_financial_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_recognized_statisti... The whole banking and financial system at that level has its tendrils wrapped so firmly around the gov't (and vice versa) that a failure there is hardly an indictment of free market principles.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  A person with sharp implements around your head and neck carries a modest health and safety risk and it might be good to subject barbershops to modest regulation. Will the regulation actually be modest? A person braiding your hair (uncommon among the white middle-class American community but quite common in African-American communities) poses a trivial health risk, and there are many cases of where the relevant occupational licensing required thousands of hours of (substantially unrelated) cosmetology training: http://ij.org/case/washington-african-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/washington-african-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/missouri-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/missouri-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/txbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/txbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/utah-hairbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/utah-hairbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/taalib-din-abdul-uqdah-v-district-of-columbia-2/ http://ij.org/case/taalib-din-abdul-uqdah-v-district-of-colu... http://ij.org/case/cornwell-v-california-board-of-barbering-and-cosmetology/ http://ij.org/case/cornwell-v-california-board-of-barbering-... http://ij.org/case/armstrong-v-lunsford/ http://ij.org/case/armstrong-v-lunsford/ The stories are pretty much the same. "They used to require 1000+ hours of unrelated cosmetology training. Now they require posting basic sanitation standards, a written test, and a $25 fee. Thousands have entered the business." And these are just some of the cases that one nonprofit has taken and won. You can bet there's plenty more out there in many, many fields. Of course, if we want to be fully ridiculous, note that Louisiana once required occupational licensing to arrange flowers: http://ij.org/case/meadows-v-odom/ http://ij.org/case/meadows-v-odom/ http://ij.org/case/chauvin-v-strain/ http://ij.org/case/chauvin-v-strain/ ... or look up the cases on interior design... or the sale of headstones...
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Headstones and funeral services were/are regulated because there has historically been a pattern of predatory behavior towards grieving relatives and older folks making arrangements.
    - dhbanes 11y ago
      It seems regulation has failed to curb this behavior.
- prawn 11y ago
  "Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value" I was thinking that this example of rent-seeking would come from non-governmental associations trying to justify their existence. If all safety checks were unnecessary, would that entity really phase them out or try to find more checks and initiatives to remain relevant?
  - pdonis 11y ago
    If the organization doing the safety checks doesn't have government force on its side, it only has an incentive to do safety checks that its customers will pay for. It can always try to think up new checks and try to convince customers that they're worth paying for; private businesses do that now. But it's still the customer's choice. If the checks are mandated by the government, then the customer doesn't have a choice, and the organization making the checks now doesn't have to convince customers; it only has to convince the government, which experience suggests is much easier.
    - nommm-nommm 11y ago
      I most certainly don't want all safety regulations limited to "what customers will pay for!"
      - pdonis 11y ago
        Who else do you think will pay for them? We are all customers; we all end up paying for them one way or another. The question is whether you want to pay for the regulations that actually benefit you, or the regulations that rent-seeking organizations can convince the government to use your tax dollars to pay for.
        nommm-nommm 11y ago
        You missed the point completely.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  There are no safety precautions beyond everyday activity. The threshold is not "zero", nothing is ever ever zero.
- amag 11y ago
  > You mean there are no "safety reasons" involved in cutting hair? Ah, but this isn't really for "safety reasons", it's for "legal reasons". Sweden is widely regarded as one of the (if not the) most safety concerned countries, after all we "gave"(1) the world Volvo and Autoliv (among others). Yet the idea of regulating barbershops for safety reasons is totally alien here. We tend to trust that people have a common sense. This seems not to be the case in the US. This is mostly because of the legal system, whereas in Sweden you cannot sue someone else because you lack (or pretend to lack) common sense. In fact, the idea would never even occur to most people here. (1) No, we're not giving away Volvos, you need to buy one yourself.
  - pluma 11y ago
    Nice theory, but it's also a regulated occupation in Germany.
    - amag 11y ago
      Germany != Sweden
      - pluma 11y ago
        Yes, but > This is mostly because of the legal system [..]. [T]he idea would never even occur to most people here. As far as I understand it, your argument was that the US regulates hairdressers because of its legal system. Germany also regulates hairdressers but doesn't have the US's legal system (in fact, it's closer to Sweden's with regard to suing over common sense). So as far as I can tell, Germany invalidates your assessment.
        amag 11y ago
        Ah, but it doesn't. That would be a logical fallacy. Germany could have another reason for regulating barbers. My original comment wasn't about the regulation of barbers in general, it was about regulating them in the US (which was what the article was about). Having been to the US a couple of times, I have experienced first hand that you are commonly deprived of your own choices in the name of safety, when really, it's in the name of "not wanting to be sued".
VLM 11y ago
I've looked into it because its been a traditional straw dog for decades. The stereotypical image of an all male barber shop giving men buzz cuts with a clipper is appealingly boring, but the work clusters inseparably with womens beautician type work, and that work can be crazy. They use corrosive dyes and peroxides and bleaches that will damage your skin or destroy your eyes both as a victim or as an employee. Used correctly its safe as a surgery scalpel. They insist on mixing technologies that are very problematic for the general untrained public to mix, like water and electricity, as either victim or employee. There can be disease issues, not quite of the level of a biohazard lab, but you want at least some minimal standards and of course some of the chemicals used for sterilization are not necessarily safe for the general public to screw around with as either victim or employee. This was a "local news issue" a couple years ago where the big bad state was attacking "retired beauticians cutting hair in their basement part time" but they carefully don't mention its more than cutting hair, there are open containers of high strength hydrogen peroxide in a residential house with kids in it, or the hair dryer not plugged into a GFCI outlet next to the running water sink, etc. WRT danger and risk its about one or two steps beneath the truck driver with a CDL and hazmat cert, or the electrician who does the wiring for a public pool, or the welder at the local nuclear plant... and the hoops to jump thru are also, appropriately, about one or two steps lower. From a high risk down view as opposed to low risk looking up, its not unreasonable. If you propose separation of the harmless hair cutting stuff from dangerous stuff, then the tear jerking starts about problems of scale and unless there is a level playing field of identical training only giant salons will be able to afford the specialized and soon to be rare training to color hair or whatever. It makes a great straw dog, but is a pretty good match compared to other fields.
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Spooky23 11y ago
Grooming trades have an element of skill and licensure ensures that people with the license have a known level of competency.
- CountSessine 11y ago
  Who cares? So does competition. If a bad dentist is allowed to operate, they can permanently damage your teeth. If you get a bad haircut, wait a couple of weeks for it to grow out and in the meantime tell everyone you know where you got your bad haircut.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Bad dentists do operate. Guess how we deal with that? Take away the license. And as others have pointed out, it's more than a bad haircut at stake. Especially if you're a female -- some jackass wielding some dye or chemical can damage your hair or scalp permanently. It's easy to criticize this stuff when you live in a society where you benefit from a well-regulated trade in all manner of services.
    - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
      I'd argue that a botched dental surgery is at least as damaging (if not more, its actual fucking surgery!) than a botched hair dye. As much as a bad hair dye can fuck your hair up, dentists actually cut into people.
      - Spooky23 11y ago
        The two aren't mutually exclusive. There may be some free-market lunatic who is in favor of unlicensed Dentistry, but I am not one of them.
- marincounty 11y ago
  Licence them fine! Don't require them to go to school. The schools are a rip-off. I had a girlfriend who went, and she was charged $15,000 (They didn't even teach her the dangers of hair straightening products. We had to learn this information on our own.) So many currently licensed professions should remove the school requirement. If you can pass a Hard state test, why not issue a licence? Of the top of my head get rid of the education requirement for contractors, realtors(get rid of this profession all together, never understood the need for them.). In California, under certain circumstances you can sit for the bar exam without going to school. I always felt if you can pass the bar, especially a hard exam, like CA, NY, why not let the person practice? Why make them go to joke non-ABA approved schools, and then take the test? Or, waste money in ABA approved law schools? Especially these days, when we have the Internet?
jonesb6 11y ago
Anyone whose ever been to a bad dentist would see the merit in this. I used to go to a "budget" dentist when I was a kid and had very painful experiences, it can be excruciatingly painful if the dentist doesn't know what he's doing.. or doesn't care. This is not a point that transfers 1:1 to a hair stylist.. the odds and consequence of a stylist cutting me vs a dentist tapping a nerve is.. huge.
- skylan_q 11y ago
  Anyone whose ever been to a bad dentist would see the merit in this. I have been to a bad dentist after my dentist moved. He was licensed. I told everyone who asked that he was a bad dentist and I found a better one. I don't see how licensing makes a difference.
  - jonesb6 11y ago
    I would argue that licensing drives up the average quality of the professional. This should be necessary for a profession that can cause pain (or hand out drugs) like dentistry, but not for something like a hair stylist where it wouldn't really matter.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    The difference is a bad experience and real harm. When anyone can practice dentistry, both the range of bad experiences and their distribution gets much worse.
grogenaut 11y ago
I mean if you don't want your barber / stylist to understand that you should clean your implements to prevent the spread of things like lice, sure there's nothing to cutting hair. Sometimes this license is very light like "yeah I can pass a written driving test".
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  You can just tell someone to clean things. That doesn't require a training program with certification.
  - ddingus 11y ago
    That certification also funds inspections to insure they are actually doing it.
    - Godel_unicode 11y ago
      Potentially relevant if, like me, you're curious about studies into the effectiveness of random inspections: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/907 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/907
      - ddingus 11y ago
        Good read. Thanks.
- rbobby 11y ago
  Not just lice... hepatitis can spread through poorly clean manicure tools.
  - Godel_unicode 11y ago
    As far as I'm aware, there are very few manicure tools used in the cutting and braiding of hair. Consider that this type of over thinking might be a large part of the reason for these licensing requirements.
deleted 11y ago
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maxsilver 11y ago
> It is logical to require you to have a license to fill a cavity for safety reasons. It is not logical to require a license to cut hair. It actually is logical to require a license to cut hair, specifically for safety reasons you mention. Barbers / Hair Stylists are waving sharp pointy blades around your scalp, eyes, ears, mouth. If you don't know what your doing, you can cut or seriously injure someone (even just accidentally). Additionally, those tools are easy transmission vectors for diseases (both from potential cuts, and from bugs like lice). It doesn't take a lot of training, the two years for licenses mentioned in the article is ridiculous and should be reduced. (As an example, Michigan's license requirements are less than half the time+cost of Nevada's requirements mentioned in the article). But Barbers have been licensed for 70-100 years (depending on the state), and there's a good reason for that -- you really do want to ensure everyone practicing that profession has some basic safety training and experience first, and the government seems like the best organization to ensure happens.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Additionally, those tools are easy transmission vectors for diseases (both from potential cuts, and from bugs like lice). And, note, this creates a public health issue, not just one affecting their direct customers (even though the direct effect is on customers.)
- mistermann 11y ago
  You could make a similar argument for every employee that works in the food industry, including the entire supply chain. Personally I find an $8 combo at Macdonald's expensive enough, we'd be looking at $12+ if everyone had a "proper" level of training.
  - cturner 11y ago
    Macdonalds is interesting because they already have a strong internal training program, and food handling is one of the issues they take care of (to a standard higher than most regimes they operate in).
  - EliRivers 11y ago

by seibelj 11y ago

nedwin 11y ago

I'm also not so sure that occupational licensing is the primary driver of the cost of healthcare in the US.

maxerickson 11y ago
Is there a primary driver? It seems to me that it's the effect of many forces, each of which is probably worth addressing. When I get medical bills, I have a lot of difficulty trying to figure out why the service I consumed could possibly cost as much as I am being charged. But I apparently agreed to pay whatever as a condition of obtaining the service.

pdonis 11y ago

> It is logical to require you to have a license to fill a cavity for safety reasons. It is not logical to require a license to cut hair. You mean there are no "safety reasons" involved in cutting hair? A person with sharp implements around your head and neck poses no safety risk? Also, even if the "safety reasons" are more compelling for dentists than for barbers, that's still not a reason to have the government doing the safety checks by means of licensing. Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value, whereas government has an incentive to impose any requirements that have enough of a political constituency, whether or not they add value.

krapp 11y ago
>Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value, "value" wouldn't have to mean increased safety for the consumer, though. The incentive on the part of private enterprise could just as well be to impose any requirements that increase profits, whether or not they add value.
- pdonis 11y ago
  If there is no government regulation to impose restrictions by force, then a requirement that doesn't add value can't increase profits, because customers won't accept it; there will always be some competitor who sees the potential to out-compete you by not having a requirement that customers don't want.
  - notahacker 11y ago
    Which is nice in theory, but absolute nonsense in practice, as evidenced by the number of no-value-add diploma mill accreditors and homeopathic regulatory bodies even under a regulatory regime where organizations can actually potentially be prosecuted for deliberately misleading people.
    - pdonis 11y ago
      In other words, the regulatory regime provides no actual benefit, yet we are paying for it with our tax dollars. Thank you for making my point for me.
      - notahacker 11y ago
        You honestly don't think that fewer people would get the medical treatment they needed if diploma-mill qualified charlatans were able to represent themselves as actual doctors or surgeons rather than having to go down the homeopathy/"alternative therapy" route?
        pdonis 11y ago
        Now you're talking about changing the current regulatory regime, not about getting rid of it--you're talking about diploma mills being able to give M.D. degrees that get recognized by things like state doctor accreditation boards. I agree that would be worse than what we have now, but it's hardly an absence of regulation; it's just making the regulations stupider than they already are. A true absence of regulation would mean that individual people would have to make their own judgments about who was reliable, in health care and everything else. Sure, anyone could call themselves a "doctor", but that term would mean nothing by itself; it certainly wouldn't confer any special privileges on the person using it. If you wanted to know if a "doctor" was qualfied, you would look at his actual qualifications: where he got his degree, if he has one (and was it a diploma mill or a real school), where did he do his internship and residency, what sorts of cases has he worked on, what is his success rate in treating various conditions, etc. (Many people already look at these things even in our current regulatory regime, as evidenced by the number of websites whose business model is to provide such information.) Would some people make bad decisions in such a regime? Of course. But people make bad decisions now. The question is which regime do you think produces worse decisions: a regime where everyone knows they are individually responsible for making good decisions, not just about what health care to get but about who to get it from, or the regime we have now, where people are encouraged to just accept particular credentials (M.D. degree, "board certified", on the list of preferred providers for their health insurance) as sufficient and not look any further.
zo1 11y ago
People are overly distrustful of private entities. Likewise, they're also overly trustful of public entities. It's implicit in almost every argument you will have when advocating free-market solutions over state-monopoly and state-regulation type solutions. And this applies to practically any problem. Unfortunately, no one wants to see the elephant in the room. Both types of entities will do (or at least have the risk-of doing) what is in their own best interest. But only one can have a violence-backed monopoly advantage.
- dsr_ 11y ago
  A government which is tightly constrained in the use of violence by laws and social custom is vastly preferable to a free market in violence.
  - brbsix 11y ago
    You've posed a false dichotomy. No one is talking about a free market in violence. A free market is tightly constrained by social custom, ostracism, and economic forces that are often more powerful than law. Lack of regulation does not make violence any more tolerable.
    - ricardobeat 11y ago
      A free market is only constrained by the morality of individuals, which as everybody knows can quickly detour from the social custom. Ostracism is never a concern if you have power and/or money. A lack of regulation doesn't make violence more tolerable, but makes it more appealing.
      - skylan_q 11y ago
        A free market is only constrained by the morality of individuals There is no one who advocates for free markets who advocates against laws. Killing people is murder, hurting them is causing injury, etc... It's constrained by laws, ethics, and economic forces.
TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
>Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value, Private organisations have an incentive to increase profit, even if it means a loss of public safety. Accountability only provides economic leverage when legal remedies for tort and malpractice are cheap and easily available. If they aren't, private organisations have no incentive at all to act responsibility. Often they don't. I think hairdressing may be a special case because salons serve a local area, and it's a very social profession, so bad word of mouth can do a lot of damage. But that's not true of most businesses. In fact of the drivers of the corporation as a business model is exactly the freedom it provides from personal and social responsibility. Instead of being personally accountable to customers, larger corporations operate at a level where local reputation is meaningless, and only governments, class actions, and the occasional PR disaster can punish bad faith operation. (Of all of those, PR disasters are often the least damaging.) There are licensing requirements for corporations trading in specific fields and for specific products. But there's no such thing as a valuable and reassuring general certificate of corporate professionalism and responsibility - which is perhaps a strange thing considering the power and influence corporations have.
- zanny 11y ago
  > If they aren't, private organisations have no incentive at all to act responsibility. Often they don't. So the dentist in the license-free world have no ecnomic motivation to not just rip peoples teeth out with a pair of pliers? People can self-regulate for risk and safety when they have complete information about the business. That would not have been available decades ago, but today we have the Internet and can easily move to interconnect everyone with common protocols to discern reviews and criticism of business to give consumers a more informed choice when choosing potentially dangerous trades, without crippling innovation and entrepreneurship within their domains.
  - mcguire 11y ago
    How much information do you have about the safe and effective practice of dentistry? How much information does the average American have about the safety and effectiveness of vaccines?
zzalpha 11y ago
Private organizations could do the same safety checks Someone didn't learn anything from the 2008 crash and the issue of private ratings agencies... Privatize safety checks and businesses will shop around to get a certification. Believe it or not, capitalism doesn't solve every problem.
- skylan_q 11y ago
  So what you're saying is: It doesn't solve the problem of the combination of gov't corruption and private sector corruption, so private safety regulators/inspectors would never be able to keep anything safe.
- nsxwolf 11y ago
  And some ratings agencies would compete to be the one with the best reputation, which would lower the value of shopping around for substandard ones.
  - Spooky23 11y ago
    Why? The customer isn't the consumer of bonds, it's the underwriters and borrowers. By stamping shit debt as AAA, they were providing a wonderful level of service for their customers -- the bankers.
  - pessimizer 11y ago
    Only in the fantasy world where people have the time and expertise to evaluate the relative merits of hairdresser ratings agencies.
- ad_hominem 11y ago
  Someone didn't learn about the de facto monopoly the SEC (federal gov't) gave the Big Three (Moody's, S&P, Fitch) at the time of the meltdown through its NRSRO status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_recognized_statistical_rating_organization#Subprime_mortgages.2C_CDOs.2C_and_the_financial_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_recognized_statisti... The whole banking and financial system at that level has its tendrils wrapped so firmly around the gov't (and vice versa) that a failure there is hardly an indictment of free market principles.
fennecfoxen 11y ago
A person with sharp implements around your head and neck carries a modest health and safety risk and it might be good to subject barbershops to modest regulation. Will the regulation actually be modest? A person braiding your hair (uncommon among the white middle-class American community but quite common in African-American communities) poses a trivial health risk, and there are many cases of where the relevant occupational licensing required thousands of hours of (substantially unrelated) cosmetology training: http://ij.org/case/washington-african-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/washington-african-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/missouri-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/missouri-hair-braiding/ http://ij.org/case/txbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/txbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/utah-hairbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/utah-hairbraiding/ http://ij.org/case/taalib-din-abdul-uqdah-v-district-of-columbia-2/ http://ij.org/case/taalib-din-abdul-uqdah-v-district-of-colu... http://ij.org/case/cornwell-v-california-board-of-barbering-and-cosmetology/ http://ij.org/case/cornwell-v-california-board-of-barbering-... http://ij.org/case/armstrong-v-lunsford/ http://ij.org/case/armstrong-v-lunsford/ The stories are pretty much the same. "They used to require 1000+ hours of unrelated cosmetology training. Now they require posting basic sanitation standards, a written test, and a $25 fee. Thousands have entered the business." And these are just some of the cases that one nonprofit has taken and won. You can bet there's plenty more out there in many, many fields. Of course, if we want to be fully ridiculous, note that Louisiana once required occupational licensing to arrange flowers: http://ij.org/case/meadows-v-odom/ http://ij.org/case/meadows-v-odom/ http://ij.org/case/chauvin-v-strain/ http://ij.org/case/chauvin-v-strain/ ... or look up the cases on interior design... or the sale of headstones...
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Headstones and funeral services were/are regulated because there has historically been a pattern of predatory behavior towards grieving relatives and older folks making arrangements.
  - dhbanes 11y ago
    It seems regulation has failed to curb this behavior.
prawn 11y ago
"Private organizations could do the same safety checks--plus, they would have an incentive to do only the checks that actually added value" I was thinking that this example of rent-seeking would come from non-governmental associations trying to justify their existence. If all safety checks were unnecessary, would that entity really phase them out or try to find more checks and initiatives to remain relevant?
- pdonis 11y ago
  If the organization doing the safety checks doesn't have government force on its side, it only has an incentive to do safety checks that its customers will pay for. It can always try to think up new checks and try to convince customers that they're worth paying for; private businesses do that now. But it's still the customer's choice. If the checks are mandated by the government, then the customer doesn't have a choice, and the organization making the checks now doesn't have to convince customers; it only has to convince the government, which experience suggests is much easier.
  - nommm-nommm 11y ago
    I most certainly don't want all safety regulations limited to "what customers will pay for!"
    - pdonis 11y ago
      Who else do you think will pay for them? We are all customers; we all end up paying for them one way or another. The question is whether you want to pay for the regulations that actually benefit you, or the regulations that rent-seeking organizations can convince the government to use your tax dollars to pay for.
      - nommm-nommm 11y ago
        You missed the point completely.
Dylan16807 11y ago
There are no safety precautions beyond everyday activity. The threshold is not "zero", nothing is ever ever zero.
amag 11y ago
> You mean there are no "safety reasons" involved in cutting hair? Ah, but this isn't really for "safety reasons", it's for "legal reasons". Sweden is widely regarded as one of the (if not the) most safety concerned countries, after all we "gave"(1) the world Volvo and Autoliv (among others). Yet the idea of regulating barbershops for safety reasons is totally alien here. We tend to trust that people have a common sense. This seems not to be the case in the US. This is mostly because of the legal system, whereas in Sweden you cannot sue someone else because you lack (or pretend to lack) common sense. In fact, the idea would never even occur to most people here. (1) No, we're not giving away Volvos, you need to buy one yourself.
- pluma 11y ago
  Nice theory, but it's also a regulated occupation in Germany.
  - amag 11y ago
    Germany != Sweden
    - pluma 11y ago
      Yes, but > This is mostly because of the legal system [..]. [T]he idea would never even occur to most people here. As far as I understand it, your argument was that the US regulates hairdressers because of its legal system. Germany also regulates hairdressers but doesn't have the US's legal system (in fact, it's closer to Sweden's with regard to suing over common sense). So as far as I can tell, Germany invalidates your assessment.
      - amag 11y ago
        Ah, but it doesn't. That would be a logical fallacy. Germany could have another reason for regulating barbers. My original comment wasn't about the regulation of barbers in general, it was about regulating them in the US (which was what the article was about). Having been to the US a couple of times, I have experienced first hand that you are commonly deprived of your own choices in the name of safety, when really, it's in the name of "not wanting to be sued".

VLM 11y ago

I've looked into it because its been a traditional straw dog for decades. The stereotypical image of an all male barber shop giving men buzz cuts with a clipper is appealingly boring, but the work clusters inseparably with womens beautician type work, and that work can be crazy. They use corrosive dyes and peroxides and bleaches that will damage your skin or destroy your eyes both as a victim or as an employee. Used correctly its safe as a surgery scalpel. They insist on mixing technologies that are very problematic for the general untrained public to mix, like water and electricity, as either victim or employee. There can be disease issues, not quite of the level of a biohazard lab, but you want at least some minimal standards and of course some of the chemicals used for sterilization are not necessarily safe for the general public to screw around with as either victim or employee. This was a "local news issue" a couple years ago where the big bad state was attacking "retired beauticians cutting hair in their basement part time" but they carefully don't mention its more than cutting hair, there are open containers of high strength hydrogen peroxide in a residential house with kids in it, or the hair dryer not plugged into a GFCI outlet next to the running water sink, etc. WRT danger and risk its about one or two steps beneath the truck driver with a CDL and hazmat cert, or the electrician who does the wiring for a public pool, or the welder at the local nuclear plant... and the hoops to jump thru are also, appropriately, about one or two steps lower. From a high risk down view as opposed to low risk looking up, its not unreasonable. If you propose separation of the harmless hair cutting stuff from dangerous stuff, then the tear jerking starts about problems of scale and unless there is a level playing field of identical training only giant salons will be able to afford the specialized and soon to be rare training to color hair or whatever. It makes a great straw dog, but is a pretty good match compared to other fields.

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Spooky23 11y ago

Grooming trades have an element of skill and licensure ensures that people with the license have a known level of competency.

CountSessine 11y ago
Who cares? So does competition. If a bad dentist is allowed to operate, they can permanently damage your teeth. If you get a bad haircut, wait a couple of weeks for it to grow out and in the meantime tell everyone you know where you got your bad haircut.
- Spooky23 11y ago
  Bad dentists do operate. Guess how we deal with that? Take away the license. And as others have pointed out, it's more than a bad haircut at stake. Especially if you're a female -- some jackass wielding some dye or chemical can damage your hair or scalp permanently. It's easy to criticize this stuff when you live in a society where you benefit from a well-regulated trade in all manner of services.
  - ZanyProgrammer 11y ago
    I'd argue that a botched dental surgery is at least as damaging (if not more, its actual fucking surgery!) than a botched hair dye. As much as a bad hair dye can fuck your hair up, dentists actually cut into people.
    - Spooky23 11y ago
      The two aren't mutually exclusive. There may be some free-market lunatic who is in favor of unlicensed Dentistry, but I am not one of them.
marincounty 11y ago
Licence them fine! Don't require them to go to school. The schools are a rip-off. I had a girlfriend who went, and she was charged $15,000 (They didn't even teach her the dangers of hair straightening products. We had to learn this information on our own.) So many currently licensed professions should remove the school requirement. If you can pass a Hard state test, why not issue a licence? Of the top of my head get rid of the education requirement for contractors, realtors(get rid of this profession all together, never understood the need for them.). In California, under certain circumstances you can sit for the bar exam without going to school. I always felt if you can pass the bar, especially a hard exam, like CA, NY, why not let the person practice? Why make them go to joke non-ABA approved schools, and then take the test? Or, waste money in ABA approved law schools? Especially these days, when we have the Internet?

jonesb6 11y ago

Anyone whose ever been to a bad dentist would see the merit in this. I used to go to a "budget" dentist when I was a kid and had very painful experiences, it can be excruciatingly painful if the dentist doesn't know what he's doing.. or doesn't care. This is not a point that transfers 1:1 to a hair stylist.. the odds and consequence of a stylist cutting me vs a dentist tapping a nerve is.. huge.

skylan_q 11y ago
Anyone whose ever been to a bad dentist would see the merit in this. I have been to a bad dentist after my dentist moved. He was licensed. I told everyone who asked that he was a bad dentist and I found a better one. I don't see how licensing makes a difference.
- jonesb6 11y ago
  I would argue that licensing drives up the average quality of the professional. This should be necessary for a profession that can cause pain (or hand out drugs) like dentistry, but not for something like a hair stylist where it wouldn't really matter.
- ddingus 11y ago
  The difference is a bad experience and real harm. When anyone can practice dentistry, both the range of bad experiences and their distribution gets much worse.

grogenaut 11y ago

I mean if you don't want your barber / stylist to understand that you should clean your implements to prevent the spread of things like lice, sure there's nothing to cutting hair. Sometimes this license is very light like "yeah I can pass a written driving test".

Dylan16807 11y ago
You can just tell someone to clean things. That doesn't require a training program with certification.
- ddingus 11y ago
  That certification also funds inspections to insure they are actually doing it.
  - Godel_unicode 11y ago
    Potentially relevant if, like me, you're curious about studies into the effectiveness of random inspections: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/907 http://science.sciencemag.org/content/336/6083/907
    - ddingus 11y ago
      Good read. Thanks.
rbobby 11y ago
Not just lice... hepatitis can spread through poorly clean manicure tools.
- Godel_unicode 11y ago
  As far as I'm aware, there are very few manicure tools used in the cutting and braiding of hair. Consider that this type of over thinking might be a large part of the reason for these licensing requirements.

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maxsilver 11y ago

> It is logical to require you to have a license to fill a cavity for safety reasons. It is not logical to require a license to cut hair. It actually is logical to require a license to cut hair, specifically for safety reasons you mention. Barbers / Hair Stylists are waving sharp pointy blades around your scalp, eyes, ears, mouth. If you don't know what your doing, you can cut or seriously injure someone (even just accidentally). Additionally, those tools are easy transmission vectors for diseases (both from potential cuts, and from bugs like lice). It doesn't take a lot of training, the two years for licenses mentioned in the article is ridiculous and should be reduced. (As an example, Michigan's license requirements are less than half the time+cost of Nevada's requirements mentioned in the article). But Barbers have been licensed for 70-100 years (depending on the state), and there's a good reason for that -- you really do want to ensure everyone practicing that profession has some basic safety training and experience first, and the government seems like the best organization to ensure happens.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Additionally, those tools are easy transmission vectors for diseases (both from potential cuts, and from bugs like lice). And, note, this creates a public health issue, not just one affecting their direct customers (even though the direct effect is on customers.)
mistermann 11y ago
You could make a similar argument for every employee that works in the food industry, including the entire supply chain. Personally I find an $8 combo at Macdonald's expensive enough, we'd be looking at $12+ if everyone had a "proper" level of training.
- cturner 11y ago
  Macdonalds is interesting because they already have a strong internal training program, and food handling is one of the issues they take care of (to a standard higher than most regimes they operate in).
- EliRivers 11y ago