Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

As odd as it may seem, a lawyer in California can't practice in Washington State without a license; neither can doctors, accountants, or engineers? And the requirements to become licensed in another State are not uniform: some require more years of medical residency, or a different kind of Bar exam, or more professional references. There's no way people who have never gotten one of these licenses have any idea how difficult they are to get; in fact, many novices thinks a license comes along with a degree: get an Engineering degree; bam, you're a Professional Engineer. There are lots graduates of Medical or Law school out there who couldn't license for one reason or another; usually the proficiency exam or the number of years required as a journeyman. Licenses are a significant barrier to entry to performing something people were formally trained to do.

The reason all this is important is because professional licensing, whatever the justification given by the licensing agencies, which are mostly private organizations, is to keep competitors out of the field. Licensing is the purest form of gatekeeping, an intentional market distortion, the way people already in the business maintain their artificial scarcity. There may be a case for a doctor to prove competence once, but certainly not State-by-State. And to make things more blatant, there's no reason at all to license contractors and hairdressers. If there has to be licensing, it should be strictly justified, consistent, and applicable all over the world.