by Josh Guckert
In America today, the right to freedom of occupation is under attack. While the list of laws which hinder liberty are many, none may be as ludicrous and oppressive as occupational licensing.
Isis Brantley has been braiding hair since 1979 and has taught others how to do so since 1984. All was well until 1997, when she was arrested in her Dallas salon for braiding hair without a cosmetology license. In 2007, Texas changed its law to allow Ms. Brantley to return to braiding hair for a living. However, this reform did not fix the problems concerning her teaching of braiding, thus requiring that Ms. Brantley spend about $25,000 to comply with the law if she wished to pass on her skills in the field.
Licensure schemes like these are not unique to the field of hair braiding. As reported by Forbes, licensing schemes have gone from affecting only about 5% of Americans in the 1950s to as many as 30% today.
Occupational licensing is a pefect example of government’s intentions being good, while their results are abysmal. The government claims that such laws are merely to protect consumers, who have no way of knowing which professionals in which fields know what they are doing. However, the free market and reputation-based choosing by consumers through mechanisms like Yelp has filled the void that the government is claiming that it is trying to fill.
Even on a simpler level, when we are new to a particular area or are in need of a service which we previously did not need, we tend to have an impulse to ask our friends and family of their own experiences. If enough say that they have had good experiences with a particular vendor of goods or services, we trust the judgment of our loved ones to be correct. Alternatively, even a few scant negative words (or personal negative experiences) can be enough to scare us away from engaging in commerce with a certain venue.
If the only issue were merely that there are better tools in the free market for us to utilize, this issue may not be as pressing. The largest and most pressing complication is that these regulations, like so many others disadvantage those among us with the least opportunities and resources. Large corporations have no problems abiding by arcane licensing laws. Conversely, individual contractors like Isis Brantley are desperate to use the skills they have to improve their own lives and the lives of others. However, they are prevented from doing so if they do not meet the standards which the government has set.
Accordingly, such laws disproportionately harm the poorest Americans, and very often minorities. With big government shaking its stern finger at these groups, they are left without a source of income to feed their families and must find any way they can to do so.
Additionally, it seems that the most powerful in the concerning arenas are the ones who push for such regulations. While they claim it is to keep the market honest, they are actually using the strong-arming of the government to keep out their competitors. Without a threat of innovation or adaptation by newcomers to the market, these stalwarts are left in power to keep matters at the level of the status quo. New ideas are kept out so that these giants may remain in power.
With the Institute for Justice fighting daily to repeal such laws, it appears that our country has finally woken up to their harmful effects. But until rules like these are fully destroyed, they will continue to pose a threat to our natural rights, including our freedom of association and our freedom to contract.
about the author: Josh Guckert is a 23-year-old law student at the University of Pittsburgh. He graduated cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013 and was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area. He is a 2013 graduate of Cato University, hosted by the Cato Institute, and was first drawn to the ideas of liberty by reading 1984, Brave New World and The Conscience of a Conservative.
