The question is not just whether licensing is necessary per se, but also whether those licensing requirements are reasonable, proportionate and effective.

Do you really need 1,600 hours of training to learn how to sanitise a pair of scissors? Does that training actually make people less likely to stab someone in the head? Are there alternative routes for hairdressers to demonstrate their competence?

To my mind, it seems far more reasonable for these issues to be addressed through routine inspections and the prompt investigation of complaints. Qualifications may provide supporting evidence for the competence of a practitioner, but they are neither necessary nor sufficient.

1,600 hours does seem excessive. That's basically a full year full time course with a summer break. There is a lot to learn beyond how to operate a pair of scissors (how not to chemically burn people when doing dye jobs for example), but it seems incredible that there is enough material to fill a full school year.

Maybe a big chunk of it is an apprenticeship? You learn the skills over a few weeks and then spend the rest of the year practicing before you're fully licensed?

"but it seems incredible that there is enough material to fill a full school year."

Ever try doing a professional hairstyle? It takes several hundred hours just to learn one. It takes several hours alone just to perform one, many times. I used to be a hair model. I had to sit in a chair in front of about 6,000 students at a casino while the designer explained his haircut to them. That was five hours alone, and my hair hadn't been touched. The next four hours were spent actually working on my hair.

It seems kind of crazy that you would have to go through a catalog and learn each individual style instead of learning a toolbag of techniques and piecing each do out of a combination of those techniques.

From what I have gathered, much of the reason behind the licensing process for barbers is for shaving, with a straight razor, which does have considerably greater risks of cuts and infection.

However, very few people go to a barber for a shave anymore. It used to be that most people would go to a barber for a shave, and shaving yourself was unusual. Since the advent of the safety razor, cartridge razor, and electric razor, it's the other way around, where it is unusual to go to a barber for a shave. But in many states, training on shaving is a large part of the training for barbers.

In fact, it also used to be the case that barbers were the surgeons as well, though I don't know how much of that time overlapped with the licensing era.

I don't know how much of the remaining licensing process for modern barbers has to do with actual safety concerns, or is just inherited from the times of barbers being surgeons or doing the majority of shaving with straight razors.

Restaurant employees, preparing or serving food, could spread disease or cause harm, but are not obligated to be licensed. Would you support requiring cooks, servers, wait staff, etc., to undergo licensing?

They most definitely are licensed at the state, county, and city level. They require food handlers permits, and possible other certifications depending on the specific activity.

That said, these licenses are typically about $10 and can be completed by online website in about an hour. I would expect something similar could work for hair cutting as well, but probably not for all the more exotic things like hair dying.

Former Chef here from the great state of NJ: I have never been licensed. I've worked for some of the better restaurants in the state (including NYT 4 star reviewed and James Beard nominated chefs). I've never known a licensed chef.

The restaurants require licensing out the ass, and I know there are ABC (alcohol handling) certifications required for servers, but cooks don't. At least one person (typically a manager) needs to be ServSafe certified, but that's not a requirement for every worker.

Meanwhile, a hairdresser must be licensed before they can step into a salon and do work. My sister and wife both worked in the industry, and I promise you they would both scoff at the idea of a 1 hour form/test for someone cutting hair. There's a ton of hygiene related things that they need to know to prevent disease transmission from cutting and handling hair daily.

Whether or not you need a food handler's card is likely state-specific.

Cooks and other individuals have to get their food handlers cards. The class is fairly simple - you show up for a few hours and then take a test - but they still have to have a valid food handlers card in order to be employed.

By that standard we should also require 1600 hours of training for driving a car.

Commercial Drivers Licenses are a requirement for anyone driving a vehicle over 26,000# or towing more than 10,000#.

You're plenty free to cut your own hair and that of your friends and family without a license. And you can drive your family around with minimal licensing. But there's a threshold you cross where licensing becomes mandatory.

Driving is not like cutting hair at home.

I can drive a car in public and kill other people, not only my own family. Considering how safe cars are today it's even more likely my family will be safe while I kill other people.

Driving a car requires licensing though. I needed to go through a driving class, 24h of driving with a certified instructor, and six months of supervised driving under provisional permit before being granted my driving license. That's pretty rigorous considering how easy driving is.

Granted, these requirements loosen after a person reaches a certain age. But they still need to demonstrate an ability to drive and knowledge of the rules of the road before being licensed.

A CDL takes a lot training to earn, and you have to demonstrate a clean driving record for the previous 10 years.

Safely driving is far harder than safely cutting hair and the consequences of failing at it are incomparably worse than the consequences of failing at safe hair cutting.

Driving is one of the most dangerous things that ordinary people engage in. You're hundreds of times more likely to kill someone driving than doing any other activity, by virtue of the relative deadliness of motor vehicle accidents, and how much driving the ordinary person does.

That you need 1,600 hours of instruction to cut hair in California, far in excess of what any jurisdiction requires to get a license to drive, is the most blatant demonstration of the injustice of occupational licensing.

Just make the barbers that are "certified by the state" on one side, and "the others" on the other side. Then people pay for their preferences.

Not wiping your ass properly and washing your hands can absolutely spread disease. I think we need a license for using public toilets.

Yeah, so you might manage to spread the flu through secondary contact and that wouldn't be great. It's not as bad as spreading lice, or several serious bacterial or fungal infections that can do a lot of damage.

We should also really encourage people to wash their hands because that's super important, especially in environments like hospitals and daycares.

We have restaurant food and safety inspections as the non-hyperbolic implementation of this as applied to preparers.

Fine, which is good, but none of those restaurant workers had to go through hundreds/thousands of hours of training to get licensed.

And literally no one who knows anything about the industry thinks that requires more than a few hours of classes.