dpb wrote:
On 7/28/2011 4:14 PM, Kurt Ullman wrote:
...

That ain't gonna happen. If you look at the legislative history of
most licenses, you will find that they were passed at the insistence
of the people being licensed either because there were so many
charlatans that the public no longer trusted the industry or
(possibly and) the industry wanted to limit competition by erecting
barriers to entry into the field.

Goes farther back by far than legislative...the origination dates to
Middle Ages in Europe for the model in Western civilization (and
probably farther than that in China altho I'm not familiar w/ their
practices in the area).

Only relatively recently has penchant been applied to such a wide
array of activities legislatively and there is some truth in the
protectionism argument in some of them but many are really public
health and safety origins and quite a number stem from sufficient
public harm over the years or a particular significant incident or
two that made headlines by its magnitude.

Hair brading? Flower arranging? Interior decorating? Manicurists or
Pedicurists? Pet washing? Breast augmentation?

Bah!