Issue 74 Over Licensed May 10, 2013

            I was originally inspired by John Stossel to write this chapter.  I was watching his program on Fox Business Network and he was discussing how over regulated society is.  In this particular episode it was about licenses.  Licensing is a quality control device to ensure that a person is capable of performing a certain type of job or task such as a driver’s license or a plumber’s license.  According to Stossel licenses do more than protect us from bad plumbers, but also dead flowers!  That’s right, I said dead flowers.  Some States in the United States license florists to ensure the quality of the flowers you buy.  They license hair stylists and other occupations as well.  States will require these people to pay fees, sometimes in upwards of a thousand dollars or more, and job training just to be able to cut someone’s hair.  Some times they even have people get a license even if the training for that license has nothing to do with the job or service they wish to perform.  An example of this comes from Stossel’s episode where a woman wanted to provide a service in the form of Jamaican hair braiding.  She was forced to get a license and go to a class on how to cut hair and at no time was she ever instructed on how to braid hair.  In other words she had to get a license on a service she was never going to perform, hair cutting, just so she could braid hair.  Money and hours wasted.

The situation with licensing gets worse:  Imagine some kids who want to open a lemonade stand on a street corner or even right in front of there own home.  The government shuts them down because they did not get a license to open up a business (which is used for tax purposes).  Well it happened, and not just to kids with lemonade stands.  It happened to kids who wanted to sell pumpkins (compliments of their parents) and to kids trying to sell cookies.  Just search the internet and you’ll find this kind of foolishness everywhere.  It’s no wonder it’s so hard to open a business.

Why do governments license these things so excessively?:  Well I can only give my opinion, but I think its government greed.  For one the States get revenue when only licensed businesses sell there products and not from the untaxed street corner lemonade stand.  This is especially true when it can take over $1,000 just to get a license from the government, and that’s not including the training costs.  The other reason is to remove competition.  For instance a New York cabby can only get a medallion to own a cab by paying anywhere from $100,000 to $600,000 depending on what the New York City taxi and limousine commission decides.  It only takes $600, classes and a drug test to drive though.  It is a system designed to suppress the competition by pricing them out of the market, thus it is almost impossible to be an independent operator.  Lobbying at its best, government sponsored monopoly at its worst. 

 The Alternative: So rather than licensing people arbitrarily to protect people dead flowers (mind you, who would shop at a florist if there flowers are just going to die the very next day) lets be smart about it.  Let’s decide what is absolutely necessary to be licensed.  Police and Firefighters come to mind.  Doctor’s, plumbers, electricians, and architects are another.  No one wants a bad doctor, so let’s make sure they have a certificate confirming that they have been trained to heal the sick.  Plumbers and electricians need to be licensed to ensure our homes don’t become money pits.  Architects need a license to ensure buildings won’t fall down upon its occupants.  It should not stop a non-architect from designing a building; it will just need an architect to give it a pass before it is built.  So those jobs that provide specialized construction all need some form of license.

I can only think of only one other occupation, a trial lawyer. I do not mean law professionals in general, but only the lawyers who become advocates for the defense and prosecuting attorneys. A legal letter or other such services do not require a lawyer’s expertise as there is instructions to write such things on the internet and your write to defend yourself should not be infringed because you yourself are not a lawyer. I say this because some one was actually arrested for writing a legal letter on behalf of an elderly man who designed a church for his community which was built. The elderly gentleman did not have a license to be an architect, and to try and keep him out of jail a friend wrote a legal letter on his behalf. This friend was arrested for writing a legal letter without having a license to be a lawyer, in which he was incarcerated for a month until he apologized to the court. Take note that he could have been out sooner, but he was trying to maintain his rights as a citizen and that his incarceration was a court order and he was not convicted of a crime.

 

Conclusion: I question why it is a crime to help your fellow man and why government wishes to corrupt itself by maintaining monopolies on chosen businesses. By the way monopolies can only exist if governments let them. We have this at the federal level with health insurers having monopolies in particular States. So I say lets end the arbitrary corruption of government licensing. To learn more on this and other issues you may simply watch more of John Stossel on the Fox Business network.