Latest Fight in the Nationwide Cartelization War
March 25, 2008 by elcap
There is a war occurring right now in America. And you probably haven’t heard of it.
Yesterday Radley Balko stepped onto the battlefield and dropped a serious bomb on the bad guys. Who are they? A small faction within the interior design (!) community, called ASID, that has been waging a 30-year battle to cartelize their industry by pursuing totally unnecessary licensing regulations all over the country.
George Will exposed their efforts in the Washington Post last year.
The effect so far has been to put thousands of hard-working entrepreneurs out of work for no other reason than to promote the anti-competitive agenda of the pro-regulation faction. As a result, people (most of them middle-aged or older women) who have been working in the field for up to 30 years are finding themselves thrown out of the profession for the sole benefit of the industry cartel.
In the past few months, The Economist and Forbes have weighed in.
And yesterday, Radley Balko wrote a stirring, must-read column for FOX. He does not hold back on exposing the cartel. And the cartel is pissed! They’ve responded, here.
Most recently, Radley responds to the cartel’s response:
If ASID is really comparing interior design to medicine, I think they’ve proven my point about taking themselves far too seriously. If ASID were merely a professional organization interested in better educating consumers and designers, and were merely offering their good name and accreditation to designers who met some minimum standards, I’d have no problem with them.
But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re asking lawmakers to codify their notion of what interior design ought to be into law, to the point of excluding anyone who doesn’t meet their requirements from using the term “interior designer” under penalty of fines and jail time. That’s textbook protectionism. And they deserve to be ridiculed for it.
Wow. When I skimmed this over the first time, I assumed you were talking about the Department of the Interior or something and didn’t really understand what you were talking about.
But interior designers? Regulated? Ha. Thrown in some flaming lingo and it’s something I’d expect in the Onion.