> found that 88 percent of those professions were unlicensed in at least one state, suggesting that the system is fairly arbitrary.
One of the occupations under that is "teacher" per the report. Another is "pharmacy technician." Another is "Emergency Medical Technician." Another is "school bus driver."
"Teacher" and "school bus driver" seem pretty unreasonable to require licenses for because teachers also have degree requirements and bus drivers also have special drivers license requirements, making extra licenses rather redundant.
In my state school bus drivers need to have a CDL and a state certification for school buses. That same CDL allows you to drive food trucks, garbage trucks, and long-haul cargo. The major difference between those jobs and bus driving is working with kids. That doesn't seem redundant to me.
Whether that should be done via a state cert or in job training is another question, though.
Whenever I hear this argument, especially with its prominent example of hair cutting, I can't help but think Chesterton's fence. Isn't one of the main problems that hair salons are avoiding is the spreading of lice and other bugs (that we now take the non-existence of for granted)?
That doesn't excuse the high fees, red tape, zoning restrictions, etc. But we should seek to reform those dynamics and make them less onerous, rather than assuming that the lack of problems we currently enjoy is reflective of the natural condition.
Personally I think that all costs for state licensing programs should come out of the state's general budget rather than being foisted onto those being required to get licenses. And passing a straightforward test should suffice, rather than needing to complete any particular education program.
The argument already accounts for Chesterton's fence. It would take about 2 minutes to understand that the reason to put combs and scissors in that blue disinfectant is sanitation. The thesis of the article is that the high fees, red tape and other restrictions are absurd.
The subtitle is "Why should anyone need a license to braid hair?", and the lead in example is talking about New Hampshire's push to wholly remove licensure. Sure, maybe that kind of tack is needed to open up minds to the idea that it's possible to have consentual private interactions without the mediation of government.
But it's not particularly nuanced to brush aside why some of that standardization may have been useful to begin with, especially when we take for granted modern conveniences like the ability to talk into any random shop labeled "hair cuts" and not walk out with bugs.
I'll admit I stopped reading the article at some point, as it was quite long and not particularly enlightening. So I said my piece regarding the philosophical basis of where reform needs to start, which is actually the same root as the issue of unaccountable police - this rotten assumption of sovereign immunity. If we correctly attribute the state's drag on individuals' lives to the state itself (rather than allowing it to be brushed aside and externalized to individuals), the proper incentives will fall out.
I've read several articles from the Atlantic in the past few days which suggest it is a right-wing publication. (E.g., this one is about reducing government size and citing the far-right IJ organization.) This is odd because I hadn't really identified it that way before. Anyone have info on why this sudden change?
Probably not related, but I didn't realize until a Wikipedia glance[1] that Laurene Powell Jobs, Steve Jobs's widow, owns The Atlantic. And that she was also an investor/board member of Ozy and co-founder of a previous venture (College Track) with its CEO, Carlos Watson, both of which have, uh, been in the news lately.[2][3]
I’m seeing recent featured articles titled “The GOP is just obnoxious,” “Republicans’ 2024 magical thinking,” and “The humiliation of Kevin McCarthy.”
The author of this article, Jerusalem Demsas, is a black woman who writes about institutional failures and progressive issues related to housing in Democrat-leaning cities.
The Atlantic certainly doesn't read as right-wing to me. It does seem however that there's been some more awareness on the left lately of cases where too much red tape can hurt progressive causes. This recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show had a good perspective, I think:
One of the occupations under that is "teacher" per the report. Another is "pharmacy technician." Another is "Emergency Medical Technician." Another is "school bus driver."