Institute of Justice

Tim Lee's been reading some of my posts on inane regulatory barriers and suggests I should get into the Institute for Justice's work. I actually first became aware of the insanity of occupational licensing rules courtesy of the Institute of Justice so I'll gladly give them props. I wouldn't really say this is an organization I support, since they do litigation on behalf of all kinds of libertarian causes I don't endorse like destroying public schools and destroying the environment.

Still, some of this is absolutely vital stuff. Consider Texas' effort to require people who fix computers to obtain private investigator's licenses or to force horse dentists to get expensive and irrelevant veterinarian degrees. These kind of regulations are a substantial barrier to economic mobility for a lot of hard-working people who don't necessarily have the start-up capital necessary to break through arbitrary regulatory barriers.