4878

Just want to say that I, at least, can see this post, and could see the prior iterations of it, too. So, not a technical problem…

4879

You can be a painter and work for someone else. They would be the ones licensed. A painting contractor would need a state license, probably a business license in the locales where he worked and would need proof of workers compensation coverage and insurance. It is that way for most trades. Being licensed by the state allows prospective customers to check the state database and insure that the guy working on their house or place of business has WC and Insurance and is licensed. If a guy gets hurt working on your home and he doesn’t have WC you can be held liable.

The Better Business Bureau likes to think it can regulate this kind of stuff but you pay to play with them, so it doesn’t really do anything.

4880

Once you’ve decided that a particular industry needs inspection, licensing is inevitable. Paint inspectors can’t just stake out a Home Depot and look for people who might qualify for painting inspection, then secretly tail them to a work site. That’s tremendously inefficient.

Inspectors need a list of names and addresses of people who they already know qualify for inspection. Which means people in that industry need to submit documents before they start working, ie obtain a license.

4881

But licensing the individuals doesn’t actually address the problem of enforcement. You STILL need to enforce at the business level.

All the licensing does is impose another regulation (that you, personally, don’t care about, i.e. the workers have a specific license) in addition to the ones you do care about (i.e. the business is operating safely).

To me, the only utility for a licensing system, is in cases where a job is of such a life-critical nature that you need to ensure that workers are properly trained, or else people will die.

So you do this for things like heavy construction, or medical stuff, because if some rando comes in and doesn’t know what he’s doing, consumers will suffer in permanent, irreparable ways.

But that licensing does not take the place of what I think you are more concerned with, which is that people sometimes do shitty jobs and break the rules.

Even in an industry that requires licensing for the workers, the licensing scheme itself does not in any replace the need for regulatory oversight, because even if someone is licensed, that still does not guarantee that they actually perform their jobs in a manner that is in line with the training they received. All the licensing does in this regard, is potentially add an additional punishment where they could lose their license. However, in really critical cases of incompetence/neglect (i.e. the cases which we actually should be worried about), there are already tons of other civil and criminal liabilities that perpetrators would be faced with.

So we are left with a situation where licensing provides some utility in certain critical industries, by essentially guaranteeing that a person has been educated to some minimal standard. This doesn’t guarantee they are actually good at their job, but it gives consumers some suggestion of basic competence in addition to the fact the person is still performing their job.

But beyond that, it makes more sense to regulate the business itself when it comes to actual performance. Licensing does not achieve such regulation, and the business regulation needs to take place whether the licensing of individual workers exists or does not. And since that regulation is taking place, in cases where the outcome is not critical, the licensing merely creates a barrier to workers’ entry.

Certainly, individual workers may CHOOSE to get certifications for skills, because doing so makes them more appealing as employees, and it can potentially offer peace of mind to consumers, but in non-critical industries this should not be required in order to perform the work.

4882

How do you ensure that the business is following regulations before something goes wrong? I think the only solution is inspection. And how do you find the businesses that require inspection?

4883

The same way you do even if you have licensing? Licensing doesn’t do anything to solve this problem.

4884

It’s not the same at all.

For instance, suppose you are a painter inspector. You want to make sure all painting contractors follow regulations. So you pull up a list of licensed painters, find one that is due for inspection, and pay them a visit.

But what if painters could operate unlicensed? Then you wouldn’t have that list. You would have to stumble across a place where you thought painters were working, knock on the door, and get told by the homeowner to come back with a search warrant. Which, by the way, you won’t get because it’s unlikely that you’ll find evidence of a crime.

4885

Forget it, Jake, it’s people-are-invested-in-the-narrative town.

4886

First, couldn’t you also find a list of painters, even without a government list?

I mean… Their customers find them. The idea that the only way to find painters is by:

… Is kind of nuts. I mean, when I want to hire a painter, I don’t just wander around and check out places that I think people might be painting.

But even beyond that, the kind of licensing you are talking about here is at the business level, right?

4887

I don’t understand distinction you’re making between inspection okay/licensure bad.

You could certainly have licensure without an inspection, but I don’t see how you could have (or twist words to say you have) inspection without licensure, or what the benefit is at that point. If someone does an inspection, surely there’s a record of it, and what is that if not a kind of license?

4888

We have inspection without licensing all the time.

For instance, I can go work in a kitchen here without any kind of license required for me to perform that job. Yet that restaurant is still beholden to health inspectors.

By contrast, if I want to cut hair in California, even if I don’t own the business, I still need to go through a licensing process. Plus the owner of the place also needs to get a license for the establishment itself, and have it inspected.

If you are worried about the safety of the establishment, only that second one would really have any applicability. The fact that the individual barber has a certification doesn’t have an impact.

The licensing just means that guy took 1500 hours of courses from some school and then paid a fee… It didn’t mean he actually meets any standard in his service. That’s stuff is checked via other regulations and inspections.

4889

So your plan is only to inspect businesses that advertise to the public? For instance, if a painting crew has an exclusive arrangement to serve Walmart, then you don’t need to regulate them?

I think there is a flaw with your plan.

For painters, yes.

Individual licenses (eg doctors) aren’t really subject to inspection, but they are required to perform self evaluation and/or continuing education instead.

… has a license.

4890

Like an engineer, you mean?

4891

So you plan to regulate painters only while they are doing work at their office? Because that ain’t where they paint stuff.

In practice, the way that painter contractor are actually regulated, is by spot checks where they are conducting their work… That thing that you seemed to think the inspectors would need a search warrant for? It’s also how they sometimes catch unlicensed painters. That and sting operations.

I mean, the licensing process for painters doesn’t tell you where painting is taking place either. That would only be something that a permitting process covered.

Having a list of painters contractors isn’t going to really help you enforce those regulations. I mean, you could call them up and say, “hey, I want to come to one of your work sites and check you out,” but you aren’t likely to find a whole lot of non compliance on those preannounced checks.

Yes. It’s being regulated at the business level. The workers there are not licensed (with the exception of bartenders, largely as a result of fairly archaic views of “vice”).

Again, this is in contrast to occupational licensing for the workers.

I realized we are kind of having two different discussions here… One, about whether licensing is required to enforce regulations that ensure customer safety, and two, about the difference between individual occupational licensing and business permitting/licensing.

4892

No, as an engineer, I’m not actually required to have a license to work. Some places have such requirements, but it’s actually much less common than the license required to be a barber. Which is kind of amusing.

I have a degree… But it wasn’t required for me to get my job. It made it easier, by making me more attractive to my employer, but in reality I’ve met engineers who didn’t have college degrees.

How are we able to conduct advanced engineering tasks without the government deeming us qualified engineers? It is a mystery.

4893

There are some states where you are required to have a license to call yourself an engineer.

In any event, I was commenting on your dismissiveness about the education of a barber. In the end, every education can be called paying some money for classes.

4894

Generally speaking, there is no license process for painters. There is one for painting contractors, but not for their painter employees. As has been said multiple times up there ☝️

4895

Yes, that’s why I said that in the next sentence.

My dismissiveness stems from the fact that having a license doesn’t actually mean you are competent at your job, any more than having an advanced college degree does. The exact same thing holds true for me, as the barber. All my degree means is that I paid some money and took some classes (and performed then with some degree of competence at the time). It doesn’t mean I’m a good engineer.

That being said, it is somewhat amusing that I would need a special license for a profession that required only 1500 hours of training, and have to pay a fee every year to maintain it, but for a job where I received years of training, I do not need a license at all.

4896

Yeah, I’m the one who said it.

I feel like you aren’t reading these posts very closely, Scott.

4897

Closely enough to know that this:

…shows no awareness of the fact that there is no licensing process for painters. If you already know that, why do you keep repeating it anyway? That can’t be my fault.

If it’s just shorthand for painting contractors, just say that.