As a general rule, Americans in general and Nevadans in particular are far too keen on regulating businesses and their customers. The news that a large scale audit of various occupational licensing boards revealed that many of the boards are significantly overpaying their members is irritating but not surprising β the larger the overall regulatory environment, the harder it is to maintain oversight of the regulators by anyone accountable to voters.
The list of occupations licensed by the state is frankly bizarre. I get physicians and other professions where killing people is a real possibility for the incompetent or under-educated provider of services. But acupuncturists? Physical trainers? Private investigators? Barbers, for crying out loud?
Most of these licensing operations are nothing more than government sanctioned gatekeeping cartels whereby entrenched members of a profession the boards always feature working members of the profession are positioned to limit their own competition. Even consumer protection is generally not a very good excuse.
If I think my barber stinks at his job, I can just go to another one. When you consider that the hundreds of thousands of Nevadans who work preparing and serving us our food have no such occupational licensing requirements, the whole scheme starts to look pretty ridiculous.
Boards will tell you they are there to prevent and punish fraud, but defrauding customers would still be illegal β and prosecutable β without setting up a separate legal scheme for every single type of job in the state.
