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IN 1941 Franklin Roosevelt added two new items to America’s ancestral freedoms of speech and worship: freedom from fear and freedom from want. Today’s politicians offer a far more generous menu: freedom from unlicensed hair-cutters, freedom from cowboy flower-arrangers and, most important of all, freedom from rogue interior designers. What is the point of enjoying freedom from fear or want, after all, if you cannot enjoy freedom from poorly co-ordinated colour schemes?
1941年富兰克林•罗斯福在美国祖先的言论自由和信仰自由论上加了两点：免于恐惧的自由和不虞匮乏的自由。今天的政治家提供了更多的自由清单：免于无证理发师的自由，免于无证花艺师的自由，最重要的是免于流氓室内设计师的自由。毕竟，如果你不能享受到免于糟糕的色彩搭配方案的自由，去谈论享受免于恐惧的自由和不虞匮乏的自由有什么意义呢。
In the 1950s, when organisation man ruled, fewer than 5% of American workers needed licences. Today, after three decades of deregulation, the figure is almost 30%. Add to that people who are preparing to obtain a licence or whose jobs involve some form of certification and the share is 38%. Other rich countries impose far fewer fetters than the land of the free. In Britain only 13% of workers need licences (though that has doubled in 12 years).
在上世纪50年代，当强制统治时，只有不到5%美国工人需要执照。今天，在经历了30年的放宽管制，拿执照的大约有30%，加上正准备取得执照的和那些包括类似执照证明的工人，比例能达到38%。其他的富裕国家却比“自由岛”——美国强加更少的束缚。在英国只有13%的工人需要执照（尽管这个数字在12年里已经增长了一倍）。
Some occupations clearly need to be licensed. Nobody wants to unleash amateur doctors and dentists on the public, or untrained tattoo artists for that matter. But, as the Wall Street Journal has doggedly pointed out, America’s Licence Raj has extended its tentacles into occupations that pose no plausible threat to health or safety—occupations, moreover, that are governed by considerations of taste rather than anything that can be objectively measured by licensing authorities. The list of jobs that require licences in some states already sounds like something from Monty Python—florists, handymen, wrestlers, tour guides, frozen-dessert sellers, firework operatives, second-hand booksellers and, of course, interior designers—but it will become sillier still if ambitious cat-groomers and dog-walkers get their way.
一些职业确实需要执照。没有人想让一个江湖医生或牙医来给公众看病，也不希望一个没经过训练的纹身师傅来纹身。但是，正如《华尔街日报》坚持不懈的指出，美国执照制度已经将他的触角延伸到那些不会威胁到健康和安全的职业，此外，执照只是依照偏好而不是由执照权威机构客观地评定。需要执照的职业清单在一些州看起来像来自英国六人喜剧团——花艺师，手工艺师，摔跤选手，导游，冷点销售员，焰火操作师，二手书商，当然还有室内设计师——但是如果雄心勃勃的给猫打扮和遛狗也要有执照，那将更愚蠢。
Getting a licence can be time-consuming. Want to become a barber in California? That will require studying the art of cutting and blow-drying for almost a year. Want to work in the wig trade in Texas? You will need to take 300 hours of classes and pass both written and practical exams. Alabama obliges manicurists to sit through 750 hours of instruction before taking a practical exam. Florida will not let you work as an interior designer unless you complete a four-year university degree and a two-year apprenticeship and pass a two-day examination.
获得一个执照很耗费时间。想要成为加州的理发师么？那将需要学习剪、吹头近一年。想要在德州买假发？你需要上300小时的课并且通过笔试和实践考试。阿拉巴马州的美甲师在参加实践考试之前要耐着性子听完750小时的课程。在佛罗里达州，除非完成了4年的大学课程、并且做2年的学徒、还有通过2天的考试，你才能成为一名室内设计师。
America’s Licence Raj crushes would-be entrepreneurs. Consider three people who come from very different states and occupations. Jestina Clayton is an African hair-braider with 23 years of experience. But the Utah Barber, Cosmetologist/Barber, Esthetician, Electrologist and Nail Technician Licensing Board told her that she cannot practise her craft unless she first obtains a licence—which means spending up to $18,000 on 2,000 hours of study, none of it devoted to African hair-braiding.
美国的执照制度扼杀了潜在创业者。以三个来自不同洲、有不同职业的人为例。贾斯汀娜•克莱顿是一名有23年经验的非洲辫美发师。但是犹他州的理发师、美容师、电解疗法专家和美甲师执照委员会告诉她除非他先获得执照，否则她就不能从事非洲辫美发师的工作，这意味着她得花费18000美元上2000小时的课程，这些课程都跟非洲编辫无关。
Justin Brown is an abbot at a Benedictine abbey that supplements its meagre income by making and selling simple wooden coffins. But the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors has ordered him to “cease and desist”. Heaven knows what harm a corpse might suffer from an unlicensed coffin. Barbara Vanderkolk Gardner runs a flourishing interior-design business in New Jersey. But when she tried to expand into Florida, the state’s Board of Architecture and Interior Design ordered her to delete all references to “interior design” from her website and stop offering “interior design services” in the Sunshine State.
贾斯丁•布朗是一个本笃会修道院的一名院长，通过制作、出售简单的木质棺材来增加微薄的收入。但是路易安娜州的殡葬业委员会用相关法律“制止”他这么做——上帝才知道一个没有执照的棺材可能给尸体带来的痛苦。芭芭拉•万德库克•加德纳在新泽西州经营着不错的室内设计的业务。但是当她想要在佛罗里达州扩大她的业务，佛州的建筑与室内设计委员会要求从她的网站中删除关于“室内设计”的所有内容，并且停止在该州的“室内设计服务”。
The cost of all this pettifoggery is huge—unless, that is, you are a member of one of the cartels that pushes for pettifogging rules or an employee of one of the bureaucratic bodies charged with enforcing them. Morris Kleiner of the University of Minnesota calculates that licensing boosts the income of licensees by about 15%. In other words, it has about the same impact on wages as membership of a trade union does. (Trade unionists who are also protected by licences enjoy a 24% boost to their hourly wages.) Mr Kleiner also argues that licensing slows job-creation: by comparing occupations that are regulated in some states but not in others he found that job growth between 1990 and 2000 was 20% higher in unregulated occupations than in regulated ones.
所有这样矫情的手段代价是巨大的——除非，你是推广这些吹毛求疵的规定的某个垄断联盟的成员或者官僚机构的雇员负责执行这些规定。明尼苏达大学的莫里斯•克莱恩计算过执照制度让获得执照的人的收入增加了15%。换句话说，执照对工资的影响就像成为工会会员一样的效果。（工会成员受执照保护，享受每小时工资增长24%），克莱恩先生也说过执照制度减缓了就业机会的增加：通过把一些在某些州受到监管的职业和在其它州没有受到监管的职业进行比较，同样的职业，在不受监管的州比在受监管的州的就业率要高出20%。
The Institute for Justice, a free-market pressure group, argues that this is only the beginning of the Raj’s sins. The patchwork of regulations makes it hard for people to move from state to state. The burden of regulations falls most heavily on ethnic minorities (who are less likely to have educational qualifications) and on women (who might want to return to work after raising their children). States that demand that funeral directors must also qualify as embalmers, for example, have 24% fewer female funeral directors than those that don’t.
维护自由市场的压力集团——美国司法部指出这仅仅是执照制度弊端的开始。不同的州不同的法律，这样混乱的法律让人们从一个周搬到另外的周变得很困难。这样的法规是对少数族裔（他们更缺少学历）和妇女（她们生完孩子想返回工作岗位）来说更不利，比如，需要殡仪员要有尸体防腐技能的资格的州和不需要此资格的州中，女性殡仪员少了24%。
You might imagine that Americans would be up in arms about all this. After all, the Licence Raj embodies the two things that Americans are supposed to be furious about: the rise of big government and the stalling of America’s job-creating machine. You would be wrong. Florida’s legislature recently debated a bill to remove licensing requirements from 20 occupations, including hair-braiding, interior design and teaching ballroom-dancing. For a while it looked as if the bill would sail through: Florida has been a centre of tea-party agitation and both chambers have Republican majorities. But the people who care most about this issue—the cartels of incumbents—lobbied the loudest. One predicted that unlicensed designers would use fabrics that might spread disease and cause 88,000 deaths a year. Another suggested, even more alarmingly, that clashing colour schemes might adversely affect “salivation”. In the early hours of May 7th the bill was defeated. If Republican majorities cannot pluck up the courage to challenge a cartel of interior designers when Florida’s unemployment rate is more than 10%, what hope has America? The Licence Raj may be here to stay.
你也许会想到美国人将采用武力手段反对这件事。毕竟，执照制度里包括两件事让美国人感到愤怒：大政府的崛起和创造就业机会机器的停转。你也许错了。佛罗里达州的立法机关最近讨论取消20个工作的执照要求，包括理发师、室内设计师、交际舞老师。目前来看，这些法律看起来能顺利通过，佛罗里达州已经是茶叶党抵抗运动的中心，该州的参众两院共和党占多数。最计较此事的垄断联盟却最使力让此议案通过。一些人说无执照的设计师使用的织物可能传播疾病并导致一年88000人死亡。还有人说，甚至更令人担心的是不协调的色彩搭配可能导致“流涎症”。在5月7日一早，这项法规被否定，如果共和党的多数议员不能鼓起勇气挑战室内设计师的联盟，那么佛罗里达州的失业率将超过10%，美国还有什么希望？美国的执照制度可能已经存留下来了。
