Via Slashdot.org - a computer website, I learned about a guy in North Carolina who runs a blog about nutrition - and the State Government wants to shut him down because he is not licenced as a nutritionist in that State. http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/04...lina-threatens-to-shut-down-nutrition-blogger Then I found out about the New Hampshire "Board of Barbering Cosmetology and Esthetics" - which even requires you to have a State licence to work as a manicurist! http://www.nh.gov/cosmet/ Then there is my perennial favourite: The Louisiana Florists Board and licences - as if a bad flower arrangement is a crime : http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-10-florists_N.htm It is obvious to any thinking person: these regulations and regulators are simply creating barriers to entry to allow their friends to gouge the public by keeping prices high. Then of course there is the simply enormous cost of running each of these regulatory cancers - right down to secretarial help. Each of them will no doubt have occupational health and safety officers, equal opportunity officers, secretaries, IT officers, Accountants, etc. - all to allegedly keep you safe from a bad manicure, a mouldy flower or eating too many apples. Here is some news: most of the developed world gets by without this crap. It cost you plenty, both in cash costs (tax dollars) and in opportunity (economic) costs. And you wonder why the American economy is going backwards? Look no further. How many thousands of these cancers exist? How about compiling a list? Then of course there is the duplication in law enforcement - town sheriffs, county sheriffs, city police, highway patrol, rangers, Marshals, etc. etc. etc. Australian states each get by with one police force - there is no duplication. Do you have any idea what all those overlaps are costing you? P.S: these guys even have a "Mission Statement" - I wonder how many tens of thousands of tax dollars they paid a consultant to come up with this? "Mission Statement The principal focus of the New Hampshire Board of Barbering, Cosmetology, and Esthetics is to protect the public health, safety and welfare by regulating the practices of Professional Barbers, Cosmetologists, Estheticians, Manicurists and Tanning. The Board qualifies and licenses individuals and businesses, establishes and enforces administrative rules and laws, and provides information so that the public may make informed decisions." Have a look at the hundreds of pages of regulations: http://gencourt.state.nh.us/rules/state_agencies/bar.html This ia my favourite: " (k) A licensee who chooses to use an electrical nail file shall have completed a certified program in the proper use of an electrical nail file in a school licensed by the board or a certified program. "
Regulations are actually a form of subsidy to existing competitors. They act to shut out new competition and pad the market dominance of existing competitors. And the consumer is the loser.
Yup, there is the problem. When you look at their "study guide" for the licencing exam, note that it says "Rough study guide" - that is simple code for the fact that if you are not a "friend" of a Board member, you aren't going to pass the exam. ie: http://www.nh.gov/cosmet/documents/study-guide-state-law-exam.pdf
Politicans are politicians because they crave power and control. No better way to control things than through regulations. it is, unfoturnately, the natural course of things. This just another example of why politics is humanity at its worst.
Those regulations do have the effect you're describing, stifling competition, which is bad. But I don't think that's the intention. Like the florist one -- yes, it's funny that you need a license to be a florist, but that's not because they want to dictate the range of colors in a floral arrangement. It's because some flowers are noxious weeds in some parts of the country, some of them can cause serious allergic reactions, and so on. I'm not saying that the regulation is a good idea, I'm just saying that if you remove that regulation, there may be negative effects that a layperson may not anticipate. I don't think a discussion of those regulations would be complete without that consideration. I mean, look at the economy. Regulate, deregulate, change this law, change that law -- what happens? @#$%ed if I know.
Regulations are like any other manifestation of government power. They can be perverted. Power corrupts. Best way to reduce corruption is to reduce power. The US could flush 90% of its regulations, and the only way you'd notice is by seeing the more robust economy. Lots of new competitors.
If there was not such a long history of unscrupulous, incompetent and downright dangerous business operators causing so much distress among the consuming public there would be little public clamour and little need for legislatures to respond to it by passing legislation to to regulate business operations. But there is and they do. Even in New Hampshire there is a great desire that a business which claims it can provide a service be actually capable of doing so in a timely and professional manner that meets a standard decided not by the business, but by the patrons as expressed through legislation supported by their representative in government, who lives down the street and goes to Manchester for six weeks every two years to work on these sorts of things and bears personal responsibility to the community for following through on their wishes but not by going so far as to make an ass out of him or herself which will reflect badly on the town and its citizens in the eyes of the next few towns over which will result in humiliating catcalls at football and hockey games for years, if not decades, to come. Live Free or Die is not some capitalist screed of free for all grab what you can. It is a call for power to the locals, their community, their town, their state. BTW, A friend of my sister had to have one of her toes amputated because it became infected from a pedicure by an unlicensed pedicurist at a resort spa in Connecticut. If she has been in New Hampshire this would not have happened.
