The needle is no more the state's business than the pen

The National Review reports a simple, sensible proposition: the government should not be in the tattoo-regulation business. I will confess I know nothing of the modern tattooist's art beyond what the headline supplies — but I know a great deal about what happens when a licensing scheme is written by those who already hold a license.

Every trade I observed in my lifetime had its guild, its mystery, its secret jealousy of newcomers. The established printer did not want a second printer on the same street. The established merchant did not want a new ship in the harbor. The established practitioner of any art will, if given half an opportunity, persuade the legislature that public safety demands he be consulted before any rival may open a shop. The result, invariably, is that the public pays more and the newcomer — often young, often of modest means, often from a family that could not purchase an apprenticeship in a respected trade — is turned away at the door.

If a tattooist uses an unclean needle and injures a customer, the law of contract and the law of tort are perfectly adequate instruments of redress. That is the discipline the market imposes without the assistance of a licensing board whose members were appointed, as inference suggests, by the very associations that benefit from limiting competition. A board that protects customers is one thing; a board that protects incumbents is quite another, and they are rarely the same board.

I spent a working life close to the practical economics of a trade. I know what it costs to set up a press, to buy type, to hire a journeyman. The entry cost of a craft is already a barrier to the person of small means. Every additional certificate, every mandatory training hour purchased from an approved vendor, every registration fee — these are not abstractions. They are dollars subtracted from the savings of a person trying to rise by her own industry. I argued in my own time that a young republic grows rich precisely because it lets people of talent work their way upward without the hereditary gatekeeping of the Old World. Occupational licensing that mimics that gatekeeping betrays the promise.

This is not to say that no standard is ever warranted. Sterilization matters; bloodborne illness is a genuine public-health concern. But there is a considerable distance between a clear, cheap, and enforceable hygiene rule and a full licensing apparatus that requires years of supervised hours and passage through a board controlled by established studios. The first protects the customer. The second protects the competitor.

Counsel for the working person: If you are considering entry into any licensed trade, look carefully at who sits on the licensing board and who funded the legislation that created it. The answer will tell you whether the license was designed for your customer's protection or for your competitor's profit. And if you are a customer, ask your representative plainly: does this rule make the service safer or merely scarcer?