Sigh. Really? Is this really what is passing for high quality discussion here these days?<p>Occupational licensing is a form of consumer protection in almost EVERY case.<p>We have taxi licensing because at one point, people being extorted by being dropped off in bad areas in the middle of nowhere unless they paid massive amounts of cash to a driver was common. Hell, it still is in a lot of parts of the world where licensing isn&#x27;t enforced.<p>When a single mother with her salon causes a staph outbreak in your Randian paradise of no regulations because she can&#x27;t be bothered to wash her scissors properly, what then? How does that help the &quot;lower income families&quot; that now can&#x27;t pay for the medical services they need because they couldn&#x27;t afford an extra $10 for a proper haircut?<p>We have medical licensing because too many quacks called themselves healers and fostered bullshit on too many ignorant people. Same with legal licensing, real estate licensing, etc, etc.<p>Your assertions fall apart with a thirty second google search into the history of why we have enacted these things coupled with some basic common sense. Yes, certain reliance on regulation has been used to stifle competition by established players, no that does not mean all regulation is bad. Cons and scams are a real reality in the free market, and not everyone has the means to avoid them, or worse to recover from them when they are victims. Any just market will have sufficient barriers and safeguards in place to provide a reasonable protection to consumers <i>to ensure those consumers actually use their money on new services and products instead of being scared into a position of paying much higher prices for services from entities they trust</i>.<p>Licensing is an incubator of a stronger economy; it allows people to be mobile with their money because it creates a lower boundary of competence and expectation.