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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 regulatio
by 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 agoHeadstones 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 agoIt seems regulation has failed to curb this behavior.
- Spooky23 11y agoNot true. In New York, regulations have virtually eliminated common frauds. For example, funeral homes are required to place prepayments in escrow in an interest bearing account. That protects you from unscrupulous or failed funeral homes disappearing with your money. Funeral directors are also not allowed to upsell your relatives after you have pre-planned a funeral.
- pdonis 11y agoHow much do these government regulations increase the average price of a funeral? How do we know the extra protection is worth the cost?
- Spooky23 11y agoGood question. It didn't occur to me that allowing people to systematically defraud the elderly and grieving folks might save me money.
- pdonis 11y agoYou're missing the point. The theory behind the regulations is that, without them, the funeral companies will make extra profits by selling people services they don't really need. If that theory is correct, then the funeral companies' response to the regulations will be to raise prices on the services they are allowed to sell, to make up for the lost profits on the services they can't sell any more. If they raise their prices enough, everyone might actually be worse off, on net, than they were before the regulations--sure, they're not paying for extra services any more, but they're paying enough more for the services they do need that they actually end up paying more overall. It seems to me that anyone who is in favor of the regulations should at least have some kind of data to show that the above is not the case.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago> raise prices on the services they are allowed to sell, to make up for the lost profits on the services they can't sell any more. Economics doesn't work that way. If a company is out to maximize profit (and any company that stoops to fraud is almost certainly out to maximize profit), why would they wait until regulation to artificially raise prices? Their prices are as high as they can go already. Harmful regulation raises prices by raising the price of inputs and raising the marginal cost of an additional product, resulting in fewer transactions being profitable and a deadweight loss to both the consumer and producer (split according to how price-sensitive the two sides are.)
- fennecfoxen 11y agoAnd some antifraud regulation on funeral homes makes sense. However, the law I was thinking of essentially prohibited religious cemeteries from selling headstones, giving a state monopoly to the Monument Builders Association of New Jersey.