What's Wrong With America's Economy -- As Told In Hair Braids
There aren't just ridiculous occupational requirements, there are pointless educational ones for people in various professions -- professions that really don't need any state meddling in the form of "licensing."
Nick Sibilla writes at Forbes about state licensing for the occupation of hair braiding for black women -- one of the many battles the Institute for Justice has taken up about occupational licensing.
And really...I get it if you're a doctor -- we don't want just any guy with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a saw to hang out a shingle. But, as for many other professions, you can see how what the state is most interested in is the source of funding that comes from "regulating" an industry. And then there's the problem of competition -- established people in a business use "licensing" to keep newcomers out by setting up numerous ridiculous hurdles. Take Isis Brantley's case:
Isis Brantley has been arrested, jailed and a plaintiff in a federal civil rights case. But she's not a whistleblower or a political dissident.She teaches how to braid hair.
For almost 20 years, Isis has fought Texas over her right to braid hair and to pass on her knowledge to others. Her struggle recently culminated in a major federal court decision earlier this month, which shined a spotlight on occupational licensing. Today, millions of Americans, like Isis, have to seek permission from the government--or fight back--before they can do their jobs.
...After a decade of fighting for reform, in 2007, Texas acquiesced and created a separate, 35-hour hair-braiding certificate. The state "grandfathered" Isis in, and honored her as the first natural-hair-care expert in the state. Finally, Isis could legally braid hair for a living.
Unfortunately, that reform didn't apply to teaching hair braiding. In Texas, braiding schools were regulated as barber colleges. So despite her decades of experience, Isis would have had to spend about $25,000 to comply and transform her natural hair salon into a barber college. Those changes were needed so that her teaching would satisfy the 35-hours of training students need to obtain a license in braiding.
...Thanks to the growth in occupational licensing, Isis is not alone. Licensure was once imposed only on professionals like doctors and lawyers. In the early 1950s, less than five percent of Americans needed a license to work from the government. Recent estimates put that number as high as 30 percent, as reported in a new study conducted for the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project by Morris Kleiner, a professor at the University of Minnesota. Moreover, according to a wide-ranging 2012 report on licensing by the Institute for Justice, occupational licenses affect many low-income or low-skilled occupations, which in turn have a greater proportion of African-American and Hispanic workers.
Occupational licensing is typically defended as a way to protect consumers and ensure quality practitioners. But many licensing requirements are just downright baffling. In Isis' case, Texas wanted her braiding school, the Institute for Ancestral Braiding, to have a minimum of 2,000 square feet of floor space (more than twice the size of her current facility); install at least 10 barber chairs, (even though braiders don't cut hair); and have at least five sinks, despite the fact that "the state makes it illegal for hair braiders to provide services that require a sink." The regulations were so strict, Texas couldn't name a single school that taught only the natural hair-braiding curriculum and complied with the state's barber regulations.
In 24 states, hair braiders need more training than emergency medical technicians. Completing the necessary coursework in one of these 24 states can cost upwards of $20,000 and requires up to 2,100 hours of training. By comparison, EMTs need, on average, about 140 hours for their licenses.
via @JHartEllis @IJ
"And really...I get it if you're a doctor -- we don't want just any guy with a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a saw to hang out a shingle."
Why not? You want to buy foods and drugs without any requirements for inspection. Why test a doctor?
Surely, if you can tell the salmonella or botulinum or heavy metals content in the food you bought on the corner, YOU can tell whether the good Doctor is a quack!
Here - I'll help: doctors have been caught performing needless surgery, even causing harm and killing patients with their mistakes. Obviously, certification and board licensing is inneffective and should be stopped!
That's the very argument you've used against the FDA and USDA.
Meanwhile, yes - the requirement for braiding hair is ridiculous, leading me to wonder why it was invented.
Radwaste at February 23, 2015 7:21 AM
Rad, the hair thing is common protectionism. It is the same reason you have to submit a stool sample to start a business in Greece. Which incidentally is why Greece's economy looks the way it does.
On a similar note it is (or at least was a few years ago) illegal to have a bank branch in Oklahoma. I found this out the hard way when I moved and found out the bank named Arvest in Norman was a completely different bank from Arvest in Duncan. My account could not be transferred or accessed causing quite the unexpected headache.
Ben at February 23, 2015 11:29 AM
The fact that someone whose food has salmonella in it will not be in business for long protects us. And incidentally, government inspectiepoos don't keep salmonella out of food. Every time you read of one -- probably in 99.999999 percent of the cases -- it's some regulated business.
Tell me again how government regulation protects me?
Amy Alkon at February 23, 2015 2:54 PM
My understanding is that most Hispanics and blacks operate under the radar and without following the regulations. Sometimes they just prefer to be fined than get the correct licenses. Or work in their homes.
If you know anything about hair, anyone with black texture (Puerto Ricans, blacks, etc) they have these crazy social connections because their hair is too complicated and expensive for the average person that they need their own sub-culture and informal schooling. Most hair stylists don't graduate school with any knowledge on how to cut hair-. They just have a $14,000 bill. The only way to learn is by being an apprentice after you graduate and blacks will segregate non-blacks from learning how to work on black hair. It's too profitable. So I have no clue how the government expects people to learn braiding when it's tied to a very small sub-culture that doesn't let outsiders in.
Ppen at February 23, 2015 5:13 PM
The fact that someone whose food has salmonella in it will not be in business for long protects us. And incidentally, government inspectiepoos don't keep salmonella out of food. Every time you read of one -- probably in 99.999999 percent of the cases -- it's some regulated business.
Tell me again how government regulation protects me?
Not to mention most 'alerts' are in fact recalls, meaning the food already went out and people already got sick and the regulators missed it
lujlp at February 23, 2015 8:08 PM
"Tell me again how government regulation protects me?"
{astonishment}
That someone in the LA basin, once prohibited for occupation by healthy lungs, could say this is just amazing...
Okay, for the umpteenth time: Regulation is not ONLY the inspection of finished product. It includes standards for the production, handling and transportation of materials which can be hazardous to the public, and inherently recognizes that prevention is the key principle in promoting public safety.
This principle is here to stay. Haven't you realized yet that you don't protect people by letting them die first? What the hell are you doing that you would think this?
You are fundamentally unqualified to evaluate the risks from most of the hazards near you.
So am I, but I am in the business of identifying these risks at one of the safest industrial sites on Earth - we just went over 9 million man-hours without anyone missing work due to injury... AGAIN.
I'm not going to subject you to fancy papers spelling out our Design Safety Analysis. Here's a .pdf you might be able to use to get some idea of the measures in place to see that you don't die from the negligence of people you don't know exist. Millions of tons of hazardous material, some of which would be WMDs if the "wrong" people had it, are being shipped in the USA today.
The Emergency Response Guidebook
Radwaste at February 24, 2015 6:36 AM
Another venue...
The FAA (and its counterparts overseas) regulates the qualification of pilots, the certification of aircraft and the procedures used by air traffic control to route aircraft. For your flight to Paris, there is a minimum equipment list which determines if the plane is operable, there is alternate airport designation and a spare fuel requirement. ATC doesn't let him roll if there won't be a landing slot at the destination - one more way to keep two jets from reaching the numbers at the same time and making outdoor barbecue - or being stranded in the air beyond reserve fuel range of a suitable airport.
Instead, let's just get on a plane and trust the guy knows how to fly, isn't too tired, isn't drunk or on drugs, knows where the airport is and can pick a slot when we get there. He's gotta know he'll be the first to the scene of the crash! I'm sure the mechanic used all the right bolts and calibrated instruments right and in periodicity on his own initiative. If we die, then other people will know not to use that airline!
Irony: air regs have come about because people HAVE died. The object is to keep it from happening again due to the simple and often-displayed tendency to backslide, to relax, to not take things seriously, to believe bad things happen only to others.
Safety measures do work with the carrot AND stick approach: "Here is the right way to do this / here is what happens to you if you are irresponsible and don't do this." Just as manufacturing does not rely on culling for quality control any more, serious people do not wait for a death to put safety measures in place!
More from Cousin Dave, I think - he has the licenses IIRC.
Radwaste at February 24, 2015 6:55 AM
Raddy, I'm not a licensed pilot myself. Just never really had the resources -- a long time ago, I went to ground school (paying my way by being the FBO janitor) and passed the written, but then I didn't have the money to actually fly. Now that I have the money, I don't have the time. I used to do some right-seat flying with licensed private pilots, handing radio and charts for them and occasionally being allowed to fly the aircraft some, but I haven't done that in a while. It makes my wife nervous.
The dirty little secret about the aviation industry is that it's sorta kinda self-regulating. There's a thing called the Designated Engineering Representative, or DER. This is a person who is qualified and authorized by the FAA to make certain decisions, within their area of speciality, on the FAA's behalf. (EASA in Euorpe has a similar arrangement, with cross-sanctioning agreements with the FAA, so many DERs can work in both places.) The DER may be an airline or manufacturer employee, or a consultant. When the DER is doing their DER job, they are in effect an employee of the FAA during that time, and their employer is required to treat them as such. This extends to having a different reporting chain, and usually different charge numbers, for DER work. (In my future career planning, I hope to achieve DER status myself someday.)
Why would the FAA agree to this? Because, frankly, if the FAA had to acquire all of that expertise in house, it would cost them a fortune. Further, it would have the effect of stripping the companies of a lot of the talent that they need to do their business and keep their planes in the air. We're talking about some pretty high-powered and specialized people. Standards for DER work and who can obtain DER status are pretty rigorus, and if you are a DER the FAA checks up on you periodically. But on a day-to-day basis, the DER pretty much has the authority. And to a considerable extent, the rules and regulations are written by the industry, together with the regulatory agencies. As an example, you've probably heard of Airworthiness Directives, which order airlines and operators to take certain maintenance actions on specific aircraft in response to problems that have been found. Most AD's happen at the recommendation of the manufacturer or operator that discovered the problem, and in fact the AD will often say something like "Perform the procedure as specified in Boeing service bulletin XX-XXX".
I've heard of games being played with DER status, but it's rare. One good thing about the aviation industry is that everyone (at least in North America and western Europe) recognizes that everyone has a common interest in the industry overall having a good reputation, and one of the requirements for that is that planes not crash very often. And I must say that the results speak for themselves: the most recent mass-casualty event involving an American/Canadian/Western European airline was the Colgan Air flight 3407 crash in Buffalo, and that was in February of 2009. So their are powerful incentives not to try to cheat a system that is working and making money for everyonoe. And people who try nearly always get called out. Last year, Southwest turned themselves in (after a DER's review) on some maintenance irregularities. They knew they would pay a large fine to the FAA, but it was worth it to them to clean up their problems and protect their reputation. Part of it is trust. Southwest knows that the FAA will be tough but won't try to put them out of business for an oversight. The FAA is pretty confident that Southwest is telling them the whole story and not hiding anything.
Now, one of the problems you run into in other industries is that the major players may not see, or realize, that they have a common interest in protecing the reputation of their industry. As Raddy says, a carrot-and-stick approach might work: the regulatory agency might offer to give industry a significant amount of control over the regulations and the enforcement of same, if the industry shows that it will take responsibility for the common interest. That's not always possible. Of course, the proper amount of regulation depends on the risks inherent in what that industry does. There are huge risks associated with airliners; the old saying goes that the Federal Aviation Regulations are written in blood. Hair braiding, not so much.
Sorry for the wordy post. I wanted to explain how the FAA system works, and do so in enough words that the whole story is laid out. It's certainly not a perfect system, but it's hard to see any other system that would be significantly better.
Cousin Dave at February 24, 2015 9:40 AM
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