[fiatmoney]

It's easy, but lazy, to look at regulations and say "this is obviously a bad idea." It's harder and more rewarding to think, "what are the forces that generate these regulations, and how can we change those forces?"

One explanation is that they're oriented towards businesses that tend to be sole proprietorships with super low capital requirements - anyone can potentially start running tours or cutting hair or interior decorating, without even renting a storefront. So, those kinds of businesses have much more of an incentive to use legislation to restrict entry, rather than relying on more "inherent" economic barriers. Relatively speaking, they have a higher payoff to lobbying than, say, a pizzeria that needs to invest a lot in ovens, rent, and payroll - if you can afford those, you can afford to either take Pizza Making 101 under a licensing regime, or more realistically fight the licensing regime itself.

How do you change that pattern given a democracy that responds to lobbying? Frankly I'm not sure, but trying to figure it out has a higher payoff than complaining about it.

[humbledrone]

By your same reasoning, isn't it lazy of you to complain about the article rather than trying to understand the forces that generate these kinds of articles, and thinking about how to change those forces?

But seriously, what's wrong with complaining? Maybe the author of the article doesn't have a good plan for fixing the problem, but what if one of their readers does? What if this "lazy complaining" article brought the issue to someone's attention who might not otherwise have thought about it, and that person has a great idea?

I mean, obviously it would better if the author had root-caused the problem with the legislation and suggested a clever way to push it the other direction. But... they didn't. So what?

[DanBC]

Licences for hairdressing has little to do with restricting entry. It's an attempt to protect people from the harm of incompetent hair dressers - some of the chemical products used can cause chemical burns, for example.

HN is pretty dismissive when talking about jobs that other people do. Hair dressing isn't super hard, but it does require some skill and training. That's why hair dressers are currently on the list of desired professions for immigration into Australia, allowing people to enter Australia as a skilled professional.

http://www.immi.gov.au/Work/Pages/asri/hairdressers.aspx

[mseebach]

In that case, the standard is applied extremely, even criminally, unevenly.

I can write and sell books advising you to treat your cancer with organic kale and meditation. Following that advice will literally kill you. But I can't give you a tour of the national mall, because... Because what, exactly?

You can't protected all the people all the time, it's simply impossible (or would result in a dizzyingly oppressive Brave New World style situation). At some points, people need to take responsibility for what they do to themselves/let other people do to them, even if some people might suffer a chemical burn from a back alley untrained hairdresser occasionally as a result - just like people do all the time when they try to do these things to themselves at home, which of course is perfectly legal and not to my knowledge a source of many calls for licensing of the ownership and operation of a watertap and a plastic bucket?

Also, licencing hairdressers doesn't even prevent fuck ups from happening there, that's people with nontrivial haircuts (the group of hairdresser clients formerly known as women) pay so much for haircuts. They know that they're hard to get right, and that it matters that the hairdresser knows what they're doing. This is equally true in jurisdictions where hairdressers are licensed and where they are not.

[nmrm2]

> Because what, exactly?

The most honest answer to this question is because free speech protections in the United States are extremely strong, and expressing anti-modern-medicine viewpoints qualifies as (even political) speech.

[eli_gottlieb]

>I can write and sell books advising you to treat your cancer with organic kale and meditation.

Actually, you're legally required to note that your book is not medical advice by a qualified doctor.

[monort]

Your interpretation do not explain why license should be compulsory. You could have a voluntary license, hang it on the door and let customer decide where to go?

[galago]

The real alternative to regulation is tort--I say this over and over. A pretty functional alternative to licensing, voluntary or not is proof of insurance. Its a way of stating to the customer "someone trusts me enough that they can play you if something goes horribly wrong and you sue." This partially solves the above-mentioned problem of humans who are, depending on how you look at it, poor at assessing risk.

[DanBC]

People are hopeless at assessing risk. They'd go for lower cost every time, thus regulation is needed to protect them from themselves.

(But I'd agree that a $12,000 cosmetician course is too much for people who only want to braid hair.)

[mhaymo]

They'd go for the cheaper option until someone is actually injured by that place, then they'd abandon it immediately. This seems like a fine system.

[DanBC]

The popularity of uninsured unlicensed taxi cabs, even though people get injured and can't pay for the medical treatment, argues against you.

It's weird that HN thinks humans are rational - there are so many examples of irrational behaviour.

[mtviewdave]

Not for the person who is injured.

[mnglkhn2]

Value is relative and it is in the eye of the beholder, much like beauty. Where I want to get is that 12k might sound much but in US the same people would pay almost double sometimes for a car.

[kw71]

I don't use many of the complicated hairdressing services, so I thought that it was mostly about ensuring that they all knew about the health rules. For instance you don't want any tools used on your head to have bacteria or parasite eggs on them. Nor do you want to be cut by a dirty scissor.

When I saw another commenter's report on the two years of college required to get a cosmetology license in a certain US state, though, that level of education seemed to be quite a high requirement for someone who simply wanted to open a barber's shop.

[JonnieCache]

Dying hair basically involves putting bleach onto someone's head. If you leave it on too long or use too much, their hair falls out. It's not unreasonable to expect some sort of certification for this.

$16,000 is insane though. For less than that in the UK I'm pretty sure you can take a full-fledged construction course and get a job building houses.

[stephenboyd]

Aside from specialists like electricians and plumbers, construction workers in the US are not licensed and usually don't pay for their own training. For the people who are doing general construction work like putting up drywall and hammering shingles into the roof, they start building on day one and learn on the job.

[pakled_engineer]

They also lobby against family owned pizzerias through city hall. Many cities have air ventilation regulations for restaurants lobbied in as a barrier to entry, requiring they install an expensive ventilation system and all it takes is a major fast food chain on the same block as your family run restaurant quietly hiring a few stooges to go down to city hall and complain about the smell and the fines add up until you're forced out of the area.

[justincormack]

But then why is the US, allegedly home to unbridled capitalism, so prone to these, more than other countries? Is the political system that much more lobbyable? If so why?

In the UK, searching gov.uk for licenses[1], you need a license for selling alcohol, being a bouncer, driving a limousine, oil and gas exploration, being a gangmaster, dealing in precursor chemicals, having a cinema (in Northern Ireland), disturbing the seabed, various imports and exports eg arms, offshore carbon storage, distilling, taxis, irradiating food (in Scotland), running a betting shop, manufacturing explosives, growing hemp, tattooing, ... etc - most of which are fairly clearly due to specific historical situations, or what are probably fairly evidence based risks (tattooing).

[1] https://www.gov.uk/search?q=license

[indymike]

Because the US never has been home to unbridled capitalism. We've been home to regulated capitalism, and we've been around now we're forgetting the capitalism part.

[walshemj]

Oddly enough when a right wing free trade think tank measures how good a country is for entrepreneurs the "socialist" uk with its NHS scores a lot higher than the USA

[crdoconnor]

I think if you're more concerned with the pernicious effect of hairdressers lobbying for slight barriers to entry than Wall Street lobbying for ZIRP and license to commit fraud, then you've probably already completely lost the ability to measure payoff.

[bobcostas55]

>"what are the forces that generate these regulations, and how can we change those forces?"

There's an entire field that studies exactly this question: public choice theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice

[programmarchy]

You raise a good point. What to do. I don't think lobbying to reform the licensing regime would work in the long run.

I would say, band together and disobey the regime. Disobedience is risky at the individual level, but risk can be spread across large groups to make it tolerable, and worth the reward. Ignore, subvert, circumvent, and carry on business as usual to the highest degree possible until the regime collapses.

[logicchains]

What you're describing sounds a bit like the left-libertarian philosophy of Agorism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agorism), and counter-economics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-economics).