Matt Yglesias

25 Responses to “Occupational Licensing”

1. Noah Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 11:16 am

   Hey, I just saw them present that paper at a conference! Cool.

2. El Cid Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 11:24 am

   One thing that might need be clarified is that a lot of the regulations are rules about what may and may not be done, say, within a home, and the only points at which that may be enforced are when (a) a permit and inspection are required, or (b) a professional is required to meet those qualifications.

   I.e., if I just want to run an extension cord through a wall, I might do it, but if I am following some local ordinance on reconstruction, I have to follow the legal standards / codes for electrical wiring; so does anyone I hire to do the work.

   Quite a lot of people support the notion of regulating how a lot of things may or may not be done — you don’t want some nitwit’s amateur electrical wiring job burning down a block of condominiums because he was opposed to the notion of following oppressive government safety regulations.

   So if you’re going to proceed with this notion of how rad & liberating it would be to free all these professionals from these bad, anti-trade licensing requirements, you might also want to suggest how you keep a lot of people from burning down neighborhoods, flooding homes with sewage, or any of the other tasks which people overwhelmingly seem to want ‘the government’ to do something about, but regarding which at some point someone has to decide the level at which enforcement happens.

   It’s pretty stupid to pass safety regulations and then have no way to enforce it except to retroactively punish violations.

   That’s why, for example, Reagan worked so hard at limiting food plant inspection staffs so that his conservative poultry and pork farmers could have a permanent advantage over the inspectors, even if Reagan couldn’t remove the laws requiring them — there would physically never be enough inspectors to cover the territory.

3. max Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 11:55 am

   There’s no real political constituency for better federal data-gathering practices, but it’s actually pretty important.

   Yeah, there is! ME! We can start with collecting better weather information, releasing better economics info, and we can certainly study that stuff.

   max
   ['All those groups need to be in their own departments.']

4. freemti Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 12:13 pm

   I think you’re still smarting from the thorough smackdown you got on the subject of licensing plumbers and went looking for some of study to buttress your premise. There is certainly plenty of room to argue the merits of licensing, but I still think that on those merits, licensing has more good things to say about it than not.

5. fostert Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

   I guess I would just say that anyone doing plumbing or electrical work damn well better do it to code. The average person doesn’t know the codes, so he hires someone one else to do it. But because he doesn’t know the codes, he has no idea whether the guy he hired knows them either. At some point along the line, someone has to know the codes. Licensing is a good way to do it. I’ve helped a few electrical apprentices study for their journeyman’s licenses. And from what I’ve seen, they actually need to learn the codes to get that license. Seems like a good system to me. It’s either that, or have the inspector present at every step of the way. That would be very difficult to do and slow construction down a lot. When there are real safety issues, licenses are a good idea. And in case you might be thinking that plumbing doesn’t rise to a sufficient level of safety requirement, consider this: plumbers do gas lines too. Anyone running a gas line needs to do it right.

6. Kevin Carson Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

   The problem is, one of the main functions of “the code” is to protect contractors by outlawing competition from low-cost, vernacular and unconventional building methods that would drastically lower the cost of housing.

   It’s the old Baptists and bootleggers thing.

7. Limagolf Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

   Matt didn’t get a smackdown in the comments of the previous posting on licensing.

   Contrary Matt is absolutely right. Licensing for parts of a few special jobs are essential. But for the most licensing schemes are little more than cartels.

8. fostert Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 1:42 pm

   “The problem is, one of the main functions of “the code” is to protect contractors by outlawing competition from low-cost, vernacular and unconventional building methods that would drastically lower the cost of housing.”

   Just so you know, anyone can use unconventional construction methods that violate code. You just need to get a variance signed by a licensed engineer. And we license those engineers to make sure they actually are capable of determining whether a structure is sound. The real purpose of the code is to standardize construction methods so we don’t need to bring in an engineer every time we build a house. Now it’s true that some of these unconventional construction methods can probably be brought into the code. If so, they should be. But until then, we’ll need engineers to sign off on them. And they will need to be licensed. I do agree that some licenses are just plain bogus. Interior decorating, for instance. You shouldn’t need a license to pick the color of my curtains. But when it comes to safety, there needs to be a mechanism to ensure it.

9. El Cid Says:
   October 18th, 2008 at 2:01 pm

   “The problem is, one of the main functions of “the code” is to protect contractors by outlawing competition from low-cost, vernacular and unconventional building methods that would drastically lower the cost of housing.”

   Why on Earth is this a “problem”? It’s a good thing.

   Yeah, poor contractors are unable to use their market advantage from hiring people who don’t know what they’re doing to construct roofs that slide off of houses during storms and kill the family inside.

   We could probably drastically save on housing costs by building subdivisions in swamps with homes made out of found sticks and thatched roofs; but I really don’t recall too many Americans jealous of Brazil’s awesome low-cost favela shack housing program on hillsides.

   It would “drastically lower the cost of” food if we didn’t have the few remaining safety protections we have on it, but for some reason I think people both want melamine-laced milk not only punished by the market and child-poisoners punished but prevented in the first place.

   Where the hell did this free market fundamentalist idiocy crop back up into liberal discourse? Is it all because Dean Baker thinks we could get cheaper health care if we didn’t make all these unjustified hoops for 3rd world doctors to jump through? If you want to come up with a better way to do medical standards other than the AMA, fine, but please stop with this ultra-retarded ‘yeah but it would be cheaper if my mechanic could also study appendix-removal in his off-hours.’

   I would think that at this stage in our economic undevelopment the fetish for deregulatory mania would have burned itself out, but I guess some peoples’ desires for cheap sh*t outweigh it.

10. fostert Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    “but I really don’t recall too many Americans jealous of Brazil’s awesome low-cost favela shack housing program on hillsides.”

    I agree with El Cid’s point, but I have to bring this up. Ten days before Katrina hit New Orleans, I was Pakxe, Laos. The Mekong was at one of its highest levels ever (exceeded only by this year’s rise). Like New Orleans, half the town was under water. But nobody had any property damage because their houses are built on stilts. Everyone had to get rid of their chickens and start fishing, but that was the extent of it. I’m guessing some people in New Orleans might have liked one of those bamboo shacks on stilts. Beats a flooded house. Hmmm, maybe we could some kind of building codes for flood prone areas to bring us up to 10,000 year old Asian technology.

11. El Cid Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    fostert: Point taken, I simply reached out for an easy example that people might know of ramshackle, uncontrolled ‘housing’ construction.

    As I recall, though, there have been plenty of people arguing that a giant problem with the New Orleans (and other) area flooding was too low of standards in flood and risk control.

    You get cases in all kinds of places in the world of people creatively showing personal initiative in going beyond the evil, anti-free market regulatory standards. Often it’s fine. Sometimes it’s better. Sometimes it’s not.

    I think it was in Spain recently that a building collapsed because someone thought it would be cool to add a couple of new floors on top of a building which had only been engineered to be, say, 3 floors.

    Maybe part of this discussion has to do with the fact that people have just sort of accepted that doing regulation in the right way (say, for modernization and innovation) is impossible, so we might as well see what happens if we get regulation out of the way.

12. Kanchou Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Being in California, it’s a common to hear complains about the code requirements drove up the housing cost. However, the house I was in survived the 1987 earthquake with cosmetic damages. And it’s always telling to hear about earthquake Californians would shrug off(6.0 or less) causing 4-5 digits of deathes in some other country.

    Another example is wildfire in the California hills. If all homes in a neighborhood are fire resistant according to code, then the whole neighborhood is safe then if some homes are tinderboxes. It’s the same theory behind the mandatory immunization.

    The plumbing license scheme is a pretty good mix of book learning and hand-on training under experienced plumbers. It’s actually one of the better licensing system.

    To attorneys who complain about having to go to law school for three years before sitting for Bar Exam. I would like to point out in California and other states, the apprenticeship model is still a possibility

13. fostert Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    We’ve pretty much beaten this to death, but there is one issue that really bothers me. I live in a high wind area in Colorado and my house is built to withstand a hurricane (code requires it). But in many places in Florida, they don’t have to build houses to withstand hurricanes. And nearly every year, Florida is surprised to find out that hurricanes hit their state. Houses get blown down and the federal government comes in and uses my money to bail these people out. If they just spent a little more constructing a better house in the first place, there would be no bailout. My grandmother’s house in Miami was built to hurricane standards and it survived at least five major hurricanes with no damage at all. All it takes is proper building codes to accomplish this. But Florida doesn’t bother because we keep bailing them out. Think how much it would cost if California decided to get rid of its fire and earthquake codes. And think how angry the rest of us would be if we had to pay for it. Proper codes save money and lives.

14. Mark Centz Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

    Kevin, I don’t see you giving any examples of ” low-cost, vernacular and unconventional building methods that would drastically lower the cost of housing”. And presupposing you have such examples, wouldn’t a better solution be incorporating those methods into the codes rather than junking them completely? Would you feel comfortable flying on airlines that utilize planes built with ‘low-cost, vernacular and unconventional methods’? Even if you would, as I live under a flight path I’m happy they’re not allowed.

15. jman Says:
    October 18th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    Just curious, was your moving company licensed?

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