> Occupational licensing was originally developed to prevent black people from being employed.
You’ll need to cite some evidence for this. Occupational guilds and membership associations stretch back a lot further into the Middle Ages in Europe versus the timeline you’re suggesting here.
There are also some very common sense public policy issues at play like making sure people who say they can cut hair or fix your teeth actually know how to do it.
Granted they’ve been misused as well for various less honorable reasons but the narrative you’re presenting here doesn’t totally hold together.
Fix teeth, yes, cut hair, absolutely not. How can you conflate those two things? It is utterly bizarre for the state to license barbers and hairdressers, especially in the so-called land o' the free.
It has gotten much worse. Flower arrangement, interior decorators, every profession wants in on the licensure monopoly. There are definitely things where you want the state to make sure that someone has a minimum level of education and training. Medicine, law, engineering, but some things are not really necessary anymore, such as the dietetics license. Certainly not a license to be an interior decorator, or arrange flowers.
The license locks in professionals to continually give money to a private organization every year, and keep out everyone else.
I remember the John Oliver segment from a few years ago
The added layer that blew my tiny British mind was that the licensing is done by states (because somehow licensing barbers was omitted from the constitution)
The consequence of this is that if you want to move or if you live in a state border city like KCMO, you have to do the licensing all over again with another state. Bonkers, as we say here.
The problem with licensure is that there are many markets where the number of licensed professionals is zero. My wife reminds me of this--she grew up in rural Idaho, where many things I take for granted (e.g. electricians, medical care) growing up in the Chicago suburbs, weren't available.
Let's consider the choices of a homeowner in this market, who needs electrical work done: (a) pay a licensed professional to travel into their market (expensive), (b) have someone unlicensed do the work (or DIY it), or (c) just don't do it.
This is why I think certification (not mandatory licensing) is the way to go. It's not clear that criminalizing economic activity when it's someone's only real choice--and there may be major health/safety hazards if the work isn't done--is beneficial.
Having been injured (not particularly badly) by a hairdresser who didn’t know what they were doing, I’m not entire sure I agree with you.
I’m not saying that the actual licensing regime makes sense (I don’t know much about it), but requiring that one demonstrate knowledge of the rules before professionally cutting hair seems fine. At least California does this for restaurants, too.
EDIT: oh I guess I read too hastily and this is about the original motivation. For that you'd probably want to read Competition and Coercion by Robert Higgs. A lot of statutes and ordinances were adopted in the wake of the South's loss in the Civil War to maintain the status quo of white dominance in business
