Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, also known as “Joe the Plumber,” has received more scrutiny from the mainstream media than Barack Obama. The Associated Press (which has never found the time to report that Obama’s earmarks for donors and a former employer) reported that Joe has no plumbing license.
Liberal bloggers and mainstream journalists have pegged it as scandalous or mock-worthy that Joe is engaging in unlicensed plumbing. Instead we should be asking why the City of Toledo, Ohio, or any city, county, or state, is justified telling its citizens whom they can or cannot hire to fix a leaky pipe.
Joe the Plumber probably won’t succeed in derailing Obama’s “spread the wealth around” tax plan, but maybe he can become the rallying flag for tearing down government licensing laws that often have the purpose and effect of protecting bigger existing businesses against upstart competitors like Joe.
There’s a sensible argument behind professional licensing: Governments want to protect consumers from unscrupulous or incompetent practitioners who could harm you or rip you off. But how effective is this protection, and what are the costs?
The most straightforward downside of licensing requirements is the cost in time and money. Small businesses often have slim profit margins, and borrowing costs them more than it costs bigger businesses. All the different government hurdles require up-front outlays in cash that can be enough to dissuade someone from starting his own business.
Also, plumbers usually know pipes and not bureaucracy. Small businesses don’t have government-relations departments, and they don’t hire lobbyists. The maze of government rules and regulations can be daunting for a guy like Joe.
A more insidious downside to licensing requirements for workmen is how they become a tool of existing businesses and thus become far more effective at protecting these incumbent businesses than at protecting consumers.
Consider Louisiana’s laws that require a license for all florists. You can’t practice floristry in that state without a license. You can’t get the license without passing an exam. The judges who determine if you pass? Currently practicing florists. Should we be surprised that most applicants fail?
Pennsylvania’s laws require lengthy instruction before you can get the cosmetology license you need to professionally do anything resembling hairdressing. Hair braiding, an art that requires skill no doubt, is included under this law.
Is the state protecting customers from bad hair dos, or is it protecting existing hair dressers from skilled mothers or students trying to earn a couple bucks on the side by braiding their neighbors’ hair?
Unions are a similar barrier to entry that protects incumbent businesses. They are cartels that would be denounced by the media and broken up by the courts as “conspiracies in constraint of trade,” were they not sanctioned by the government and extremely cozy with politicians.
The New York Times spoke to union bosses who attacked Joe the Plumber for not belonging to their union. Thomas Joseph at Toledo’s local plumbers union told the Times that by calling himself a plumber and not enrolling in their union, Joe is “basically playing games with the world.”
So Joe, we’re told, is some sort of shady character, not getting government and union stamps of approval for his work.
But is it really the government’s job to tell us which businesses we can and cannot trust? Aren’t there already non-profit organizations that do the same sort of thing? Wouldn’t there be more of these groups if the government wasn’t doing so much of this?
And looking at examples like Louisiana’s floristry regulations, and knowing how easily it is for governments to become the tools of powerful big businesses, it’s hard not to conclude that many licensing requirements are just another example of big business using big government to keep out competition.
So Joe the Plumber hasn’t won approval from Toledo’s government to do his job, but he also hasn’t been hit with a citation—yet. With his newfound attention, will the Toledo Division of Building Inspection come after him?
What’s going on here is that if one person wants to pay Joe in exchange for Joe’s labor, Toledo will say that consensual arrangement is illegal. But Joe and his customer are not asking for anything from anyone else, certainly not from their government. The customer’s money and pipes, and Joe’s labor and parts, are all that’s involved.
If we’re all about “spreading the wealth around” these days, how about removing barriers to small businesses? How about setting Joe the Plumber free?
Examiner columnist Timothy P. Carney is editor of the Evans-Novak Political Report. His Examiner column appears on Fridays.
