Why you shouldn’t need a license to do any given job (taxi driver, plumber etc)
Licenses seem pointless. It seems the aim of a License is protect you from getting a rouge tradesmen, taxi driver but why do we need to make it illegal for anyone else to do work. Surely if you’re worried about the person you’re getting to do the work you could see if they are on an approved list, a list of those people who at the moment have a license, but if you want to take a risk and get something done more cheaply that should be up to you – it doesn’t affect anyone else if you suffer as a result of not taking advice given.
So we may now have reached the conclusion we don’t need licences but it doesn’t actually do any harm in having them. The reason we should actually get rid of them is they create a dangerous situation for a free market, that it isn’t actually free. To help improve competition and improve the quality and pricing of services you need to get as close to a free market as you can and this can only be done if firms are as free as possible to enter and exit a particular trade depending upon whether they think they can make a profit doing it, by being better or offering lower prices than the existing firms. Licenses prevent this since only certain people are allowed to enter the market.
They also create the problem of concentrating power on those who decide when the licenses are given out and if too few licenses are given out it can force up prices making things worse for the consumer not better.
