I was good friends with a stylist. She told me the training she received and it's pretty in depth. Cutting hair involves a lot more than operating sharp objects within an inch of another person's head.

Most of their income comes from dying, high-lights, etc, which involve applying harsh chemicals to another person's hair. They need to understand what can be mixed safely and how to identify issues. Plus there's the whole sanitation aspect.

Even the person who wipes your butt in a hospital has more training than a stylist.

So have a minimum required certification that covers just sanitation and safe use of chemicals. The market can sort out the rest (i.e. the skill of the stylist).

That's exactly what we have now. There is no certification for "good stylist," "excellent stylist," or "average stylist."

Right, but my point is that California basically requires a full year's worth of training (1600 hours) in order to be licensed, which seems to cost approx. $16k at some of the schools I just looked at. From looking at one random course book, that consists of:

- 10 hours of training on state law - 75 hours of training on infection control - 200 hours of training on chemical hair control - another 1,265 hours on other topics (shampooing, hair shaping, hair coloring, styling, business skills, etc.).

Perhaps those first three areas are important perquisites to being licensed, but the extra 1200 hours seem like something the market could sort out without being a prerequisite for receiving a license.

How does the difficulty of the trade imply the need for state enforced certification?

In my personal opinion, I'm happy to rely on the reputation of a branded salon/barber shop/individual stylist. I've had both good hair cuts and bad hair cuts from state certified barbers. As far as I can tell the state doesn't provide any value to me other than limiting my choices. To the extent we might be concerned about poor people cutting people's hair without the state's permission, and doing so with non-optimum sanitary practices... well... poor people are already doing this and it doesn't seem to be causing any real public health crisis. I say we give it a shot in some locales and see what happens.

I'll wager you also haven't had chemical burns to your scalp, either. Weirdly, there was just a thread on Berkson's paradox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18667423

I feel like this is a bias first world people have. I grew up poor, got plenty of haircuts from "a lady in the neighborhood" and never got chemical burns on my scalp, never had lice, etc. Sure, anecdata, but travel to basically any third world country where regulation is either nonexistent or unenforceable. Countless people do this every year. These things just aren't a real problem. You can get a haircut, you can get street food, etc. Basically just eat where the locals are eating and be careful about water/drinks that haven't been boiled. In other words, drink hot tea instead of water, or bottled stuff.