621. Is Professional Licensing a Racket? | Freakonomics Radio
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.พ. 2025
- Licensing began with medicine and law; now it extends to 20 percent of the U.S. workforce, including hair stylists and auctioneers. In a new book, the legal scholar Rebecca Allensworth calls licensing boards “a thicket of self-dealing and ineptitude” and says they keep bad workers in their jobs and good ones out - while failing to protect the public.
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One thing that wasn't talked about here was Continuing Education Requirements. Now there's a racket. An entire industry has arisen providing these 'credits' to lawyers, teachers, what have you, through classroom instruction which is worthless, if not harmful.
I know lots of "engineers" who advertise and practice engineering without having a PE license. I have even known a few who represented themselves as PEs. One in particular came across my path several times, and when I looked into his background, i discovered that, not only was he not licensed, but he had not even completed the first year of engineering college begore he dropped out.
Here's the punchline:
When I contact my state licensing board and gave them all of my info on him, including documentary proof that he was telling customers that he was a PE, the state did nothing but send him a warning letter.
The state official told me that there was very little they could do to him since he wasn't licensed and that most of their enforcement resources were used against licensed people like myself who had unpaid child support or had otherwise broken state rules.
I wonder if the local DA would act any differently.
My daughter got her professional license for eye lashes and had to do 400 hours of hands on training. You can get a pilots license with 40 hours of logged flight time.
No one should need ANY license to to ANY job. Someone without a, say, law degree, could just be required to inform their clients of that - done. Caveat Emptor.
What do you call a doctor who graduated at the bottom of his class? Doctor.
If you choose to get rid of every bottom off class you’d literally have zero doctors. I bet you tell this silly joke every week
Texas has no licensing home builders or remodeling contractors. Several years ago Texas did a two year program wherein one needed to register as a home builder or home builder. The requirements were $500, a truck and a dog. Actually one could still register while not having the truck or a dog. The idea was to weed out the crooks. During the two years in the laws existence only two companies were tried, convicted and fined. The law was sunset at the end of it’s two years on the books.
The answer is, of course it is. My wife is a PhD from Budapest that supervises other PhDs candidates and without the NYS license, she is as qualified as a babysitter in her profession.
I'm a P.E. A licensed professional engineer.
1. I think it is useful to have standardized board exams that professional have to pass. It ensures (to some degree) that they are technically competent.
2. I'm not so sure, however, about the degree requirements and apprenticeship requirements - the hoops you have to jump through - to be seated to take the board exams. I actually think that exams should be very hard, and anyone who xan pass them should be licensed.
I'm my own case, I earned an unusual, interdisciplinary engineering degree that mixed physics and engineering. It was the most demanding degree in the engineering college, and it was also the only one that wasn't acrediited to take the PE exam. Even though I took all the same courses with the other degrees. As a result my state made me apprentice for 8 years instead of 4 before allowing me to take the exam, and another state refused to recognize that license because they required even more time. They made me take the board exams again before giving me a license to practice. To this day, I am the only PE that I know who has sat and passed the PE exam twice, in two separate states.
Lastly, I've known great engineers who were never licensed, and I've known PEs whom, in my opinion, no one should hire - ever.
Professional licensure neither guarantees competence nor protects consumers. It's strictly about restricting access to a profession in order to keep salaries high
Milton Friedman's Phd dissertation was 'Income From Private Professional Practice', (later a book published in 1945 with Simon Kuznets, both men later won Nobel Prizes). It was about this very problem. At that time, about 5% of professions required licensing. Today it's about 30%.
State sanctioned monopolies.
Physician shortage is not directly affected by licensire boards. The gate keeping happens at the level of the medical schools and limitations of class size and also by limited number of residency training slots which is directly funded by the US government
Oh, go to AZ. They want to allow naturopaths with no residencies to do liposuction. If you die, at least you spent half what a board certified surgeon cost.
@ 😮
Need a photo of the guest in the thumbnail
My state does contractor licensing but doesn't inspect any work 1st and doesn't go around checking to see if contractors are licensed. So it's more or less a volunteer tax
I'm confused by the comment at 30:31. I don't know the details of that case, but if someone is too incompetent to maintain a driver license, I don't want that person assisting a dentist who might be digging around in my jaw. If this was a criminal driver license case, something big probably have happened. Inability to function in basic life tasks should flag a candidate for closer scrutiny in hiring for high-consequence jobs. I want my dental assistants to have all needed licenses, pay any parking tickets on time, pay their taxes on time, and use alcohol/drugs/debt responsibly. If they have DUIs or failed to pay parking tickets for years, I'm going to have concerns. Some deserve a second chance, but they'll require closer supervision.
I officially do not give a shit whether my dental assistant, can even drive a car or has a licence, or speeds or has unpaid tickets, or drink or smoke pot.
I care that they can do their actual job.
Official campaign slogan: 'can't someone ELSE do it?' No one wants to take responsibility for their own initiatives, but assign blame to a profession's services they are 'entitled' to. 'I want...' this association to sponsor legislation to make this trade unfair for ALL who don't participate in the collective madness of legal fantasy. If individuals sought lawful recourse in OUR courts, state-approved distinctions would not exist.
“People think that getting license, gives them license.”
The cost of many CEUs is also a problem for licensed professionals.
IDK. I need to keep up on new treatments. Why would you want me if I only had the skills I learned 30 years ago?
Like for most questions, the answer is "it depends".
I am a licensed professional engineer, for instance. My experience in engineering licensing is that some of the same issues are present, but they are not as egregious.
Licenses are necessary because some people can't spell license. Holy cow.....
The beginning has me thinking this would be scandalous, but as she explained how they operate, I was like ehh, not great but I get it.
Ever since Massage therapy became regulated by the state of Massachusetts and not the county I've had to get an establishment license as well as a regular license. The Establishment licenses is a nightmare. In addition to massage documents you have to get a Cori report and draft a floor plan which I had to hire a contractor to do since I have no draftsman skills . The floor plan has to demonstrate things like how far the bathroom is from the treatment room and that there is a garbage can in each room, how far the massage table is from the walls Etc .Even if my treatment room doesn't meet all the board requirements I'm sure as hell going to say that it does since at that point , I've already made a deposit and signed a lease . When you have gathered all your documents including the floor plan in PDF format , you have to go through a complicated online portal which is like a labyrinth and then wait 4 to 6 weeks before there's a health inspection and you can hopefully get your establishment license issued . All this is very expensive , complicated, stressful and time-consuming . I didn't vote for Trump but if he wants to get rid of licensing boards or severely curtail the regulatory powers it would be A okay with me!
Yeah, but if your disabled client can't use the potty, they will sue you. I hope your municipality checks to see that you are not ignoring the disabled. I have a NYS massage license, the most strict in the country. I am also a licensed occupational therapist. I WANTED both. And now that I am disabled, I would report you if you failed to meet ADA requirements.
@@Cathy-e1s in my opinion it's always best to approach a small business owner with compassion first rather than harshness and threats and see what can be worked out. Some modifications that can be made are feasible while others are not. Accessible spaces are in high demand in my town and depending on when the therapist needs to rent a place in a hurry, there may just not be a lot of options available . Also consider that a lot of old buildings are legally exempt from ADA standards because of grandfathering laws . However massage therapists in particular have the advantage of being able to offer home visits as a possible alternative and I've certainly done that in the past before I got my current more accessible space !
Just a heads up, Licensing is spelled wrong in your thumbnail as "Lisencing"
When they are attacking the professional licensing system it's important to pay better attention to the small detlais. 😉
If that trapper was not licensed, he was almost certainly required to be.
"lisencing" is misspelled on the title image... c'mon ?
It got you to click and post, didn't it? Engagement stats!
I think they fixed it
@@incantations446nope still broken
Congratulations on producing an episode that contained exactly zero cognitive dissonance.
Spelling. C'mon man.
This lawyer speaking on how a NP can provide equal care to an MD is ridiculous. They should learn about the limited training and lack of consistency in training NPs get. For this podcast to publish with this level on inaccuracy is unfortunate. I will stop listening.
Suppose someone wants medically supervised weight loss while taking a semaglutide. They can go to a nurse practioner who runs a weight loss clinic and spends all day, every day treating and gaining experience with patients that have metabolic syndrome.
Who do you think understands weight loss medications better, that NP, or a doctor? I've talked to more than 1 doctor who knew very little about semaglutides. One of them even tried to discourage an obese freind of mine from trying them with a very bogus, uninformed rationale.
NP really can, in some cases, provide equal or even better care.
@@briankeegan8089 as someone who works in the medical field I can say hi have met some really good NPs and some really bad ones. Mostly bad ones. Due to the nature of their training they are generally handicapped in the medical field. That NP may know a lot about semaglutide and obesity due to excess calorie intake but she is not guaranteed to understand the dozens of other conditions that contribute to weight gain that may be the root cause and properly address those.
For most things, people just need to access antibiotics/antiviral drugs and/or get a note to miss work without getting fired. No MD is needed to do a throat swab, lab test and decide basic treatment for the damn flu or strep or even broken bones.