[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.