Freedom or license?
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article recently reporting on, of all things, the question of whether horse-teeth floating—the filing down of horses’ teeth to maintain their oral health—should be subject to government regulation. According to the Journal, the Texas board of veterinary medicine has been aggressively lobbying the state to take action against those who float teeth without a veterinary license, and has ordered two dozen such floaters to cease and desist. Four of these floaters have responded with a lawsuit, arguing the cease-and-desist orders violate their rights under the Texas constitution.
This case raises the issue of government licensing in general, which has been rapidly expanding over the past half-century. The Institute for Justice, which is backing the floaters in their lawsuit, reports that the number of American workers subject to such government oversight has increased from 3 to 35 percent in the past 50 years. Licensing laws are a critical point of entry for government intrusion into individual lives, with everyone from real estate agents to hairdressers (!) being forced to obtain government permission to make their living.
People often view licensing as a necessary safeguard against unqualified practitioners of a trade. But there’s an important distinction between government licensing and private certification. Private agencies exist in many fields, from interior design to bookkeeping, that offer certification assuring a level of professional competence. There is no reason why, on a free market, customers would have difficulty obtaining an independent assessment of a given practitioner’s qualifications and skill. Indeed, there are often multiple private certifying bodies competing with one another to offer the best guarantee of excellence. And companies such as Consumer Reports and Angie’s List offer advice on a huge variety of products and services.
But such agencies merely offer their expert opinion, they don’t have any power to force their judgment on anyone. Government licensing, on the other hand, introduces force into economic affairs and renders irrelevant the judgment of those involved in the interaction, both practitioners and their customers. No matter the triviality of the transaction or the expertise of the participants, the overriding issue becomes whether the practitioner has a license—with criminal prosecution as a consequence if he doesn’t.
Consider “floater” Carl Mitz and his customers. According to the Institute for Justice, Mitz has floated nearly 100,000 horse teeth in his 25 years as a practitioner of the trade. He’s earned a reputation as one of the nation’s premier floaters, and his customers, which include one of the largest breeders of miniature horses in the country, swear by him. But because he’s not a licensed veterinarian, the state of Texas views him as incompetent to perform this relatively minor dental procedure.
Ironically, veterinarians typically don’t even practice floating or receive much training in the trade in veterinary school. The Institute for Justice says floating is rarely tested on the national licensing exam, and Gary Barnes, a plaintiff in the case who entrusts Mr. Mitz to the dental care of his 300-head herd of miniature horses, recounts that he’s “never met a veterinarian adequate in equine dentistry, and both my father and grandfather were veterinarians.” Tom Allen, a Missouri floater who is also a licensed vet, says requiring a degree to float “is like saying you need to become an architect in order to work as a carpenter.” Indeed, in the Candidate Information Booklet for the national veterinary exam, floating is listed as one part of one bullet point in a list of 47 broad categories of knowledge.
This irrationality is not unique to government intervention in horse-teeth floating. This same scenario is repeated time and again with licensing laws in other professions, which treat us all as mindless peons incapable of determining who is capable of cutting hair, running an auction, preparing tacos or growing roses. They assume we are vapid incompetents, and attempt to replace our judgment with that of our “enlightened” elected officials, who presumably know what’s best for us better than we do. And no matter the level of their ineptitude, we are compelled by the threat of force to do as they say.
A victory for the Texas floaters would be a victory for the freedom of each individual to exercise his own rational judgment. I wish them the best.
Image: pmarkham on Flickr
Categories: Government & Policy