I f, after graduating from Tufts, you opt for a career change and decide to become a barber in Rhode Island, you will be forced by law to attend barber college for 1,500 hours.
Similarly, in this state, it is illegal for you to work as a professional trainer without 1,800 hours of clinical experience and certification by the National Athletic Trainer Association.
Licensing laws like these - supported by those already in the industry - make it difficult to break into a profession. The fewer barbers there are, the higher the prices that a barber can charge. A lack of surgeons results in surgery being more expensive and surgeons getting higher salaries. The few folks who are lucky enough to get the government to drive their competition away get paid more (in economics, this is called rent), yet vital services, like law and medicine, become a bit more expensive for the rest of us.
An example: the American Bar Association (ABA), whose members are already lawyers, makes becoming a lawyer difficult. In almost every common law country, simply a bachelor's degree (L.L.B.) is required to practice law. However, American lawyers in all but seven states need a Juris Doctorate (J.D.), which takes three years of post-graduate study.
All ABA-accredited schools need to have an expensive, up-to-date law library. They need to be staffed with a full-time director who also must have a law degree. The rest of the faculty must, of course, be full-time. Eighteen states require that candidates have a J.D. from an ABA-accredited law school; in most other states, there are added restrictions on people who didn't graduate from an ABA-accredited law school.
By so doing, the ABA, the American Medical Association (AMA) and similar associations are doing what they are supposed to do: benefiting their own members, who can then charge higher prices.
However, though such restrictions benefit their members and have little to do with producing better "results," they also drive up costs and restrict the supply of lawyers, doctors and the like for the wider community.
The government is furthermore doing something it should not be doing. It is helping small numbers of professionals at the expense of the vast majority of its citizens by limiting competition.
Some fields, like law and medicine, are quite technical and, often, only current practitioners are in a position to evaluate the quality of services. This is what the AMA and ABA do to justify their rent-seeking behavior. But how would your average Joe judge a surgeon's skills or an accountant's mastery of our arcane tax system? Lawyers, doctors, architects, accountants and other professionals are in demand because they have specialized knowledge. Can citizens make good choices without being experts?
Consumers don't need to spend years studying a subject in order to make an informed decision. Even if you don't understand the process, you can usually comprehend the result. A lawyer wins a case or loses it. A doctor cures the patient or kills him. Reality is not quite that black and white, but there are clear goalposts. Advances in technology have made it easier to get that information.
Repealing these licensing laws would give consumers more options and drive down prices. The ABA and AMA aren't going away. If you want to hire a lawyer with a degree from an ABA-accredited institution, you will be able to do that. However, if you have simpler needs, you should no longer need to pay for someone who is overqualified. More choice does not mean lower quality. Individuals should have the freedom to hire who they want.
Xander Zebrose is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Alexander.Zebrose@tufts.edu.
