In the 1950s, one in 20 people needed a license to get their job done.
Now it’s one out of 3.
Talk about government over-regulation.
Did you know that you need a license in some parts of the country to:
- Sell caskets (proponents site consumer safety)
- Fortune Telling
- Interior Design
- Teeth Whitening
- Shampooer
- Florist
- Auctioneer
- Packager
- Locksmith
Licenses don’t protect people:
- Bernie Madoff was licensed.
- Teachers who have sex with students are licensed.
- A funeral home director who buried bodies out in the woods was licensed.
What licensing does do:
It crushes new entrepreneurs. The need for licensing often comes about by established members of a profession lobbying government to make others qualify with a license, thus making it tough on new competition.
For example, a woman who wanted to braid hair was told she couldn’t do it unless she spent thousands of hours to get a cosmetology license.
She wants to braid hair. She went to the board of cosmetology. No, not without our license she was told by the cosmetology board.
In this case, cosmetologists had gone to the state legislature and lobbied for the creation of a license.
She would be competing with cosmetologists, who now conspire to keep her out.
Licensing:
- Limits choices
- Raises prices
- Enriches older businesses at the sacrifice of new start-ups and innovators
- Squashes competition
- Makes consumers worse off
There’s nothing like a free marketplace to regulate business, allow everyone to compete, and bring down prices.
Watch this powerful 4-minute video by John Stossel on licensing.
What do you think? Write me at [email protected]